altabello

Thanks for all the responses. We don't want to 'loose the crate' entirely, Shoni will always have a crate for certain things, like going snowmobiling with us (crate fits nicely in snow machine sled), or should she have to be immobilized for medical reasons, etc. However, the crate is too small for her on long car rides, and we travel a lot. A larger crate, even a travel crate (which she doesn't like, it gets too hot in there), won't fit the backseat of our truck, nor could we take other passengers while her current crate is in there. We took her backpacking last weekend, and she rode in the truck crate-less afterwards, a seven hour trip, she would have been so cramped in the crate! While backpacking, she sleeps in our tent vestibule without wandering off. Again, a crate can't be backpacked into the backcountry. It's also quite cumbersome to take her to work and haul the crate back and forth between our home, the car and the office, that's why we would like to train her to do well without the crate. Isn't there anyone on here who's dog isn't crated As for the barking: she's not left alone in the hotel room, we're with her, and she barks (probably cause it's a new place). The barking isn't relentlessly, but loud enough to possibly get complaints (so far, so good). No to little interest in Kongs or other food stuffed toys unfortunately, unless we play with her and the toy (she's very much people focused).

Our 4 months old BC pup is getting too big for her crate in the car. I'm afraid a larger crate won't fit the backseat of the truck anymore. So we would like to slowly start to de-crate train her. The crate upstairs that she sleeps in is much larger, so she can keep that one for a while longer. However, we would like her to be able to sleep just on a dog bed, cause we couldn't take that Xlarge crate when traveling and staying somewhere else. And talk about staying somewhere else: Any advice on keeping a dog from barking? Like in a hotel? Any tips? TIA!