# How much space is enough??



## Roxygirl13 (Dec 7, 2007)

<span style="font-family:Comic Sans MS">We have begun our journey of crate training our new baby and so far so good :thumbsup: 

My question is, how much space should I leave for him while he is confined. I do work during the day so for a few hours (until my daughter gets home from school) he is crated. My current older maltese still is gated in a large area of our bathroom. She however is fully trained and so she does not use any pads. She has plenty of room to move around, has her bed and toys. I have him gated off seperately in a area just large enough for his crate and a pad right out side. So basically he has the option to eat/drink in the crate, sleep in the crate, play with his toys IN the crate or come out and potty. I like this because he can only potty on his pad and so far he has been doing just that, nothing in his crate :aktion033: BUT....is this enough room you think to not feel too confined? His crate is plenty big enough for him now and will be has he grows but it is still not huge. I just don't want to give him too much freedom...at least not yet. Think this is fine or should I give him room to "run around" outside his crate? </span>


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## jazak (Feb 12, 2008)

Your setup sounds great. As long as he is pottying where he is supposed to then it should be just fine. Good luck.


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## jmm (Nov 23, 2004)

That's fine. His crate should be big enough for him to lay down, get up and turn around in. That's it. If you give him more room, you run the risk of him having accidents.


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## Max & Rocky (May 20, 2004)

> How much space is enough[/B]


"Crate training" is a phrase that I have seen used in multiple ways and sometimes misused. It literally is a small crate which is just barely large enough for them to stand up and turn around in (although with a little trouble). Most dogs have a desire to not soil their immediate evironment or themselves and crate training attempts to leverage this desire to teach them bladder control. 

As a bit of an aside... if you have ever seen a dog who because of sickness, has had uncontrollable case of the runs which resulted in them soiling themselves... you will likely witness a dog which is nearly beside themselves in wanting to get away from this mess... It is just as (or more upsetting for them) then it might be for us.

Anyway... at some point, you will start to observe a dog who when you remove them from the crate and take them to their potty area, pretty quickly goes. This is telling you that the dog had to go when it was in its crate, but it is developing the necessary bladder control to know to hold it until it can go to a more appropriate place.

Once you regularly see this sort of behavior, the dog is showing you that the need for crate training is about past... 

At this point, I believe it is more appropriate to move the dog to an x-pen sort of setup. The crate can go into this as well as a potty pad and some food, water, etc.

I am sometimes concerned that people tend to leave their dogs in a crate for time periods which are just too long. Anything above about 2 to 4 hours max is just asking for trouble, in my opinion. The reason I say this is that sooner or later that dog will have an upset tummy or a need to pee while you have it confined to the crate... and so try as they might want to hold it, they can not. Now they have no choice but to learn to live with living in their waste until you come home and release them. So instead of leveraging the dogs desire to stay clean... you are in effect, teaching them to get used to living in their own wastes...

This is one of the common issues that dogs from back yard breeders have... They are simply so used to living with their waste that this standard crate training just no longer works... and this is to avoided at all costs.


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## jmm (Nov 23, 2004)

The rule of thumb for confinement is the dog can hold it one hour more than its age in months. Adult dogs can certainly go 8 hours without a problem. I've crate trained dogs of all variety...and they all thrive even if left for the day. The balance is the dog must be properly exercise - physically AND mentally.


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