Fine Dining Crate: Keep Up The Good Work, or Get Started If You Want, or just do a little, it’s all OK!An aside about paralysis. When we are raising puppies it can often feel like we just never get enough done. We want so badly to do a great job that we can find ourselves paralyzed. Give yourself permission to not get everything done that you hoped to, and instead focus on small things you can do. Don’t have time to do Fine Dining with every puppy? That’s ok! Pick a puppy at random and do Fine Dining with that puppy in any crate you have in the house. Pick a different puppy another day. Going to run an errand? Take a puppy (and some chews) with you in the car and do a Vehicle Fine Dining experience. Worry the puppy will need to potty? Put a litterbox in the crate if it’s big enough (as adult dog crates often are) and if the puppy has to go it can use the box. If you are worried for the safety of a puppy in your vehicle, grab a family member to guard the puppy. It doesn’t have to be a big plan to help that puppy. I will often focus on puppies going to younger owners, who haven’t raised as many puppies as an older person has, or if I have a client that I know will worry about everything I will focus on their puppy instead of someone who is easy going with their dogs. The secret is to avoid paralysis by doing something small, frequently. We are continuing to offer one puppy per meal/duration session a Fine Dining experience. Remembering that everything we serve our puppy in Fine Dining is an enhanced and better version of what we are offering in the regular crates.As we move the Fine Dining crate around to a new location within our house each meal or session, the crate will gradually end up further and further away from the litter. While this is the point of the Fine Dining crate, it does present a challenge to us, because we may not see or hear that the puppy is ready to leave the crate. Since the entire idea behind the Fine Dining Crate is that the puppy has a good experience while being separated from the litter, we want to take a couple precautions to help ensure the puppy does actually have a good experience.1.Set a timer when you load up the Fine Dining puppy, just long enough for the puppy to eat it’s meal, or for every few minutes for a puppy who has a pacifier, and check on them frequently.2.When you feed the special meal, you can also drop a pacifier in, so once the puppy is done eating it may choose to chew the pacifier instead of getting fussy.3.You can feed from a slow feed bowl (that is suitable for the puppy’s ability) to slow down eating.4.You can offer the puppy in Fine Dining a choice to exit and you can do all the duration building exercises in the Fine Dining crate. Or, you can bring the Fine Dining puppy back to the main crate area for a duration session if that is more convenient.Using the random number generator with the Fine Dining CrateWe want our puppies to be confident with novelty and unpredictability in their daily lives. We may have been using the random number generator to ensure our daily training and crating sessions are random. Now we are going to add some unpredictability to our Fine Dining Crate.This will help our puppies be comfortable in their crates, no matter if the crate has moved since they last time they were in it. This helps all puppies during transition week, but it’s especially helpful for puppies who are going to be traveling or competing later.1.Find different “locations” for your fine dining crate (must be puppy safe locations) in your house; and if weather permits, on a safe porch, or even in your vehicle (again, only if this is safe). Important! these must be puppy safe locations, not too hot, not too cold, and not where they might be in danger of any type.2.Number each location on a master sheet.3.Set your RNG from 1-5.4.Place your crate based on the location number the RNG pulls up.5.We are just doing one puppy per meal (large litter) or one puppy per day (small litter) and I don’t worry about if every puppy hits every location, I use the RNG to pick the location for that session, and I rotate through the puppies.Here is a sample from my own home. My home is small, so we don’t have a ton of rooms!1.Kitchen2.Office3.Bedroom 14.Bedroom 25.Bathroom 16.Bathroom 27.Back porch (weather permitting)8.Front porch (weather permitting)9.Honda Fit (weather permitting)10.Honda Element (weather permitting)Warm/cold weather alternates.1.Living Room2.Kennel Room3. OfficeRemember, Our Fine Dining crate uses classical conditioning to pair being removed from the litter and crated separately with super yummy things, by regularly removing puppies from the litter and crating them separately we are also using simple habituation to teach our puppies that removal from the litter is to be expected.This will be very beneficial to our puppies and their new families during transition week. We know the puppy will be under stress during transition week and that this is beneficial, by doing this exercise we can prevent distress during transition week. Distress is detrimental, and can cause transition week to veer off course, something we want to avoid for our puppy and it’s new family.We are also creating an expectation that being crated in different areas is a normal part of life! This is very helpful for show and sport puppies, but it’s equally important for companion only dogs who can be expected to travel in a crate, be boarded, perhaps stay in a hotel, or any manner of other life events that dogs lead.You can also encourage your new puppy owners to continue this work as long as their puppy is small and crates are easily moved around. Even cloth crates can be used, for example, taking a cloth crate to puppy class and using that as the “settle” location instead of a mat.

Separation is Great: Fine Dining 2 (elective)

No items found.