In essence, a dog crate restricts or confines a dog’s movement, but it is more than that. Those of you who have trained your puppy will find that the crate will become its own home or den where it can sleep at night, rest when it needs to rest, or feel secure when it needs to have a sense of security.
What do Dog Crates do?
You can use a foldable metallic fence for a large dog crates, a plastic dog house for your pet, or a collapsible plastic or nylon mesh foldable crate. Your dog’s crate should be designed to fit the space where the crate is going to sit.
To suit the different breeds of dogs, crates come in an array of sizes. Crates must allow your dog to sit upright and allow him to lie across them comfortably. Crates must allow your dog to turn around inside the cage easily.
When I have visitors or when she’s eating, I put my Corgi dog in a collapsible metallic fence in the car porch, and at night, I move her into a heavy duty plastic crate. Another Beagle dog of mine is kept in a heavy-duty plastic crate and is allowed to roam free during the day and night.
With my first puppy Beagle, I bought a large size dog crate that has a gate and the top can be removed. There is a towel inside the crate where the puppy sleeps to ensure its comfort. As a way of getting the puppy used to the new crate, I removed the top and played with it inside. During the day, the puppy was allowed to move freely about the garden. He only slept inside the crate during the night. This puppy learned that the crate is its home and that it will not soil it.
Lastly, I would not recommend crate training a puppy for more than two hours at a time, other than his sleeping hours at night. If someone has done something wrong, they shouldn’t be imprisoned in a crate as a punishment. It should not be used as a punishment for your dog when it fails to listen to you during training.
Some owners leave their dogs inside the crate when they are leaving for work as they are concerned the dog may damage their home furnishings and soil the carpet, especially if they live in apartments. The largest crate that you can get should also have sufficient ventilation holes (because the weather is sunny all year long, I actually dug more holes in my dog crate so that it would be better ventilated as it is so big). Hopefully you do not work late too often, so the confined time is only six to eight hours. Allow the dog to go outside right after you get home, so that it can stretch and relax.
In addition to its large modern dog crate furniture, I bought it along with it when I brought it home. If you maintain the crate and keep it clean regularly, it can last for a long time. Though I recently replaced this crate with a larger one, my beagle still likes to take a nap in it even though he is so used to it. The two dogs in my family use their crates placed in the car porch as dens for resting or hiding from thunder and lighting during thunderstorms.