Crate School is a detailed course version of our wildly popular Crate Conditioning, an incremental approach, blog.     This course is based on our own crate conditioning protocol, used now with hundreds of our puppies.   It’s written by breeders and designed for both breeders and litter fosters.

It is designed to be started when puppies are just ready to leave the whelping box and move into the weaning pen.    Puppies who are just starting to ambulate around, are aware of their surroundings, and can navigate the opening of a crate safely.  The course builds on itself and the core protocols require a small time and financial commitment of setting up and supplies.   It is designed to work with your litters natural instincts, so while there are elective training exercises you can do to that are very helpful those are not required for the core goals of creating the desired associations and habits with the crate.   The course is designed so that you can do electives as you wish but with the understanding as breeders ourselves that some litters take more of our time and leave less time for “extras”.

Some puppies may need to a bit older due to their size or build, before they can navigate the doorway of a crate but the protocol can be started with beds for a few days until their legs are under them a bit better. 

Of course the plan can be started with puppies right up to send home age if you wanted, but less time will mean fewer goals are met, however the goal of conditioning positive feelings about the crate and associating the crate with resting and eating are easily met in a couple weeks.   

For individual puppies beyond typical send home age of 8-12 weeks please use our Crate School: Confident Crating course which is designed for older puppies. 

If you are not already using a good litter box training protocol with your litter of puppies we recommend starting Poop School: Litter Box Training For Breeders and Fosters along with this Crate School course, otherwise your puppies will be dirtier and crates may become their primary toilet area.   Cleanliness is a primary goal of crate training, so having an appropriate cleanliness training litter box program is important for success.   Your puppy owners will thank you! 

Crate School For Breeders and Fosters: Table Of Contents