Do you have any training ideas for a dog that breaks out of the crate or could you recommend one of the metal ones you sell.

Question

My son and daughter-in-law are both active Air Force stationed in Ramstein GR.  They have a 8 month old Malamute who is a crate escape artist. They have crate trained him since the day they brought him home since my son's older Mal (who died last fall at the age of 12 ) was also an escape artist, they knew they had to teach him from the start.  He was fine for the first 7 months (even flew 12 hrs on the plane in his crate) but now good old Champ has decide he doesn't have to stay in a crate any longer! He busts out of both the airline travel crate and a 48x28 wire crate every time they put him in when they are at work.

    Any ideas? Or what crate on your site would you recommend? I see that they are all $700-$1000, they would need a size that would allow them to fly him back to the states in the crate (not for another 3 years).  How much would shipping be to Germany?

    Or do you have any training ideas? You came highly recommended from a raw feeding list that I am on out of Chicago.  I have 7 border collies and a pit that would never think of busting out, actually they all love their crates while they are in them (all trained from the age of pups)  Anyway my friends and I are out of ideas except for them to heavily invest in a 'lion crate'

    Thank you for any ideas.

    Judi

Accepted Answer

The only metal crates that can be used have to meet airlines specs, I won’t go into them here, but they have to have a tray in case the dog pees and ways to give the dog water and food.

We are not open today. I will send this to my office manager and she will try and answer your questions. It very well may be cheaper for them to look for a crate in Europe. These things are not cheap – but they last their lifetime. They will never buy another crate.

A point to mention on escape artists. Some dogs get so hectic in a crate that they try and chew their way out. They end up hurting themselves. Those dogs should be trained to wear a muzzle before they are forced to stay in a crate. The basket muzzles we sell are the best for this because the dog can drink with them on. The training to put them on should be done with markers. I also have a free streaming video on how to use markers and muzzles – it’s in the streaming video portion of my web site.

The fact is if the dog is trained to the crate with markers they learn that the crate is not bad. He should be in the crate when your family is home – then they can correct the dog for misbehaving – (I would use a remote collar and low level stimulation - Remote Collar Training for the Pet Owner). They should also feed the dog in the crate.

Here are the markers DVDs that will teach them how to train:

The Power of Training Dog with Markers
The Power of Training Dogs with Food

The reality is metal crates don’t solve one single behavioral problem. They just forcibly contain the dog.

A lot of things to think about here.

Regards,
Ed Frawley