Glenn, You make assumptions before you comment. None of them help. First I am the Boss of my company, so I get to make my own schedule so Jackie is hardly in the kennel for more than 4 hours at a time, and never longer than 8. I am sure even a normal job requires even that. Second I live in a house but don't see the difference, Jackie gets plenty of excercise and plenty of my time. Third she is a house dog, that is how I want her and don't want to put up a run when she has a large fenced in yard to go when she is outside.

Al, Mike, Kristina, and Will... Thank You. This is what I wanted. Some great help and ideas.

The welded kennel was my original thought. I was looking at the Leerburg and Ray Allen, but they looked too thin and cramped for daily use. Maybe it was the picture. I will have to check out the dimensions. She currently has a large MidWest folding crate. I probably will have to go to one of the solid welded crates that are "Malinois" proof for my Shepherd!

I would like to hear if anyone has any other ideas and thoughts.

Regards,

Michael I only made my assumption based on your origional post. You supplied very little information if any other than your pup bent the crap out of the crate. Your last post would have helped explain the situation better.

Good Luck,

Glenn

Mike,
I had a similar instance happen with our dog and her folding crate, first she learned how to open the door. After I figured out to put locks on the door she was able to open up the crate were the front meets the sides. A couple of things that worked for me was I took and bent the tabs around to no longer make it a folding crate so she can’t get out. More importantly I changed the room that the crate was in to the room that we spend most of our time as a family in and that seemed to help.

I'm not a fan of those wire/folding crates, unless your dog is not into escape at all. I would suggest just purchasing a good solid plastic airline kennel. I don't remember the brand, but I like the ones that you twist the handle on the door to close it, and there are 4 bars not just two. One goes into each of the 4 sides of the opening. I have found these crates will contain all buy my most determined Malinois. When I have had dog who will break out of one of these crates, I've had to use some training/behaviour modification anyway, because when put into a solid metal crate, they would still fight the crate to the point of snapping a tooth.

I've seen dogs scratch up their noses pretty bad on silver wire crates that don't have the smooth plastic (powdercoated maybe?) coating on them - I use one myself but my boy has never had any trouble with it other than when he was about 8 months old - the crate was open at night n he was laying in it, he decided to chew on the metal bar below the doorway of the crate n his jaw and lower canines got stuck between the wires n I woke up to this horrible panicking screaming doggy sound, I never lept outta bed so fast in my life, I remember SCREAMING at Cujo "STOP MOVING!!!!", ran to his crate n held him still n calmly unhooked his teeth so he could get his jaw out. He's never been stupid enough to do that again. On the one hand I would consider that a dangerous aspect of a wire crate - but on the other hand, that can only happen when the crate is open, not when it's closed - so it can only happen when I'm home and can "save" my poor pup.

I may have to go with a different type of crate for my dutchie depending on how crazy she is.