When my boy was 6 or 7 months old and I started trusting him out of the crate at night I woke up one morning to the most excrutiating horrible screaming noise from my dog totally freaking out and panicking. Nobody has ever seen me shoot outta bed as fast as I did that day, I immediately saw what had happened..... with the crate door open there's an extra wide opening on the bottom horizontal bar of his crate that is normally blocked by the crate door, n my boy was chewing on the bottom bar of his crate, then when he was done chewing he apparently realized that his lower canine teeth had gotten his jaw caught in his crate. The second I lept up I yelled at him simply to get him to stop freaking out, grabbed him n managed to unhook his jaw from the crate.... he's never done it since, but I believe it was Lisa Ewan who told me her dog did the exact same thing in his crate.

So my warning to everyone is --- if your dog has a tendency to chew on crate bars, make sure you somehow block that extra wide opening when the crate door is open!! My dog's crate is never open when I'm not home (because hes in the crate) but if for some reason his crate were open and I wasn't around to hear his freaking out, I'd hate to think of the kinda broken jaw he may have inflicted on himself trying to get loose.

It's funny to read your post Mike. Last month my 10 month old GSD did almost the same thing. He was lying in the crate w/the door open. We were right there next to him eating dinner. Good thing because out of nowhere he let out the worse string of sounds I ever heard come out of him. I'm still not exactly sure what happened but from gathering info from everyone at the table who saw any part of it, it appears that Gunnar somehow got his paw momentarily stuck in the same spot Mike mentioned. Why it was so painful, I still can't figure out but I'll never forget the sound he made.

Sorry for my poor choice of words...I didn't mean to say funny as in ha ha. Funny as in odd because I thought my experience was a freak thing until I saw Mike's post.

I purchased two Petmate wire crates from Wal-Mart, one large sized, the other x-large, they are both junk! I like plastic airline crates but my chows get hot so easily that I thought they would enjoy the air flow wire crates allow, which they do....they also enjoy having a whole complete side fall down allowing them to escape!

I like the airline crates also. My little guy loves his <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />(Thanks Lisa) <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />. The wire ones from Wal-mart don't look like they would hold up to any kind of chewing.

I use the Petnation Port-A-Crate E-32 for my Aussie. It has tons of venalation. So far it has held up to the amount of chewing that she does. Its light weight and very easy to set up.

Yes Mike's quite right, my Dane pup did exactly the same thing and I was in the same room and it was a really frightening experience. Fortunately it only happened the once. Frightened him so much he has never put his teeth on the bars since.