Overnights, Weaning Pen Expansion and Crate Feeding. By now our puppies are approximately 6 weeks old. We will be expanding the weaning pen again, this time to the maximum size our space allows. Here are a few things to consider as you expand your pen and going forward into the last half of the course.1.Remember why we started small, to ensure our puppies had the best chance of making it all the way over to the toilet area when they needed to void. This is where crate conditioning and cleanliness training overlap. For puppies to be clean in crates, they need to want to be away from their waste. So while litter box set up and cleanliness training may seem unrelated to crate training the two things are actually related and success in one area is a bit dependent on success in another area.2. Don’t feel you have to expand and make changes weekly if a different schedule works better for your puppies development. 3. Hopefully by now you have decided if you will be doing overnights in crates, and if so if you will be using a litter box, or offering potty breaks because this will dictate if you need some larger crates (for litter box plus puppy overnights) or not (no overnights, or overnights with potty breaks).4. Always keep access to an exterior door in your planning if you will be taking puppies outside in the morning, or at night, or plan how you will get puppies to the litter box during toilet breaks.Additionally consider these things when deciding about overnights in crates, if I want to do them, and if so with a litter box in crate or without. 1.How big is my litter. I have an entire room, what non breeders might call a “dining room” that I devote to puppy raising when I have puppies. This room isn’t particularly large because my house is small overall (under 1200 SF). This means if I have more than 8 puppies starting around 8 weeks I can look forward to a big mess in the morning. At 8 weeks my puppies are more likely to lay or play in the litter box at night, to drag around the EZ whelp pads, and generally make a mess. This is why a lot of breeders in my breed send home at 8 weeks. If I don’t want to wake up to a train wreck in my weaning pen I know that a large litter of 8 to 12 GSD puppies will need to be crated overnight starting around 8 weeks, due to their maturity and their size in my limited size weaning pen. This is as much for my own sanity as crate training for the puppies. So, if you too are finding that your older puppies are getting bigger, stronger, and more crowded as they approach send home age that is a good time to consider overnights in crates, even if for just a few puppies.2.When are my puppies going home? Don’t crate simply because you don’t want to deal with mess, and don’t do overnights too young, this is unfair and can cause problems later. As a rule I think overnight crate stays are OK the a few days before you are planning to send puppies to their new homes (assuming this is 9 weeks or over for “typically” mature puppies and 10 weeks for slow maturing puppies). But two or three weeks before is too much confinement for such young puppies. Further, if you are sending your puppies home right at 8 weeks I would not do overnight crate stays at all, but instead have this work start in the new home when the puppy is a little bit older.3.How mature are my puppies? The reason we want to think about age and maturity is that there is a certain amount of physical and emotional maturity that is required for confinement, not everything that can be done with more mature puppies is beneficial when done with less mature puppies. Not only does the puppy need the maturity to handle confinement when crated, the crating itself prevents other types of activities from happening. So for example, if a puppy is crated it’s not engaging in play with it’s litter mates, or exploring and playing in it’s environment, our crating prevents that. 4.Is there a good reason NOT to do overnights? Here are some reasons I might skip overnights, or do just 1 or 2. If the puppies have been unwell during the raising process and so have had some delay in their development and play skills. If there are very few puppies in my litter. If I’m sending home at 8 weeks, or right at 9 weeks, instead of almost 10 (I send home on the first Saturday AFTER the litter’s 9 weeks birthday). These are all reasons I might not do overnights or do fewer.The thing to remember is that in my experience the value in crate conditioning isn’t found just in “locked inside” sessions, but also in the every day positive experiences that happen in our crate bank. The naps on a comfortable bed while not being trampled by other puppies, going in and out of crates at will, all kinds of good thing happening in crates, the meals, the chews, the pets and treats at the back, all add up over the weeks. THOSE are the things that create positive associations with the crate and which will help the new owner with formal crate training.So don’t panic if you can’t do overnight crating with any particular litter, all of the other work is equally important, and indeed just doing the overnights in isolation won’t be nearly as effective as doing all the small conditioning exercises.And don’t feel like you can’t do a mixture, so instead of laying out your pen such that you have an overnight crate for every puppy maybe you set up so that you can do overnights with half the litter one night and another half the next night.Mid Protocol Expansion:For most breeders this weeks expansion will occur around 6 to 7 weeks, or the roughly halfway point for this litter. Most puppies will be going home in 3 to 4 weeks.Expand based on the number and size of your puppies followed by the availability of room for crates.Here is what I do at this expansion for a large litter of more than 8 puppies1. I remove the smaller crates I’ve used up to this point, and I expand the pen to include my entire room including the full size crate bank. I keep up to 10 crates along a wall, and I usually place 5 crates on the bottom row before setting up a top row.Here is what I do at this expansion for a smaller litter of fewer than 8 puppies.1.I expand the pen about 2 to 4 feet (1 to 2 ex pen panels) on both sides making it larger but not using the entire room.2.I continue to use the small crates that are inside my weaning pen in some cases, but if there are only 4 puppies in the litter I can set up 4 of the 23 x 36 inch crates instead of 6 of the small puppy crates.These choices work for my particular situation, I have other options too, for example, I can remove the small crates from the weaning pen, and drag the x pens over so they just hook up to just a couple of my permanent crate bank crates. I have also designed my weaning pen so that I can either include the larger crates, or exclude them, from the weaning pen based solely on how I hook the x pens together. Because I plan in advance, these various options are obvious to me and I can change things around very easily “in the moment”.The one overriding rule for me is that every weaning pen set up includes crates for feeding and daytime duration sessions. If you are NOT planning on doing any overnight work or,If you are going to do overnights but WITH potty breaks:If you will NOT be doing overnights with your puppies, or prefer to do overnights with potty breaks instead of a crate litter box, you can continue to use the smaller crates you have been using up to this point. There is no reason to move to the larger crates.This lesson’s expansion we will reinstall doors on the crates (if you have removed them) as we prepare for duration sessions in the crate.

Week 3: Weaning Pen Expansion, Crate Feeding, Crating Overnight?

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