Crate locations in your home?

[MaryP]

Presently, I have 2 crates in the living room, 1 crate in the "dining room" (now just an area to put crates), and one crate in my bedroom. I don't normally have crates in the bedroom, but one of my foster dogs is storm phobic and if it storms during the night, he needs to be in the crate in the bedroom with us.

[Lewie'sMom]

I have a crate for each of the dogs located in my bedroom. I figure packs sleep together which why I chose the bedroom. The dogs quickly learn that the bedroom/crate area is the quiet place.

[Laura L]

6 crates on the front porch. 1 has been moved to the bedroom for now because of the stock tank for chicks (doesn't that work great?). The front porch works best because I can just close the doors and the dogs can be loose in there if they're wet-we've had a lot of rain lately.

 

Laura

[BustopherJones]

1 dog, 1 crate. Location: our bedroom. When Missy was alive, she would not go into a crate, PERIOD, so her bed was also in our bedroom. Come to think of it, I can't think of any dogs or cats we ever had that didn't sleep in our bedroom...

[Lenajo]

I'd have to object to thost foot stabbing cow hooves. They have got be almost as bad as Moss's dinosaur nylabone that he took the head off to create his personal prison knife in case he needs to break out .

 

Not all my dogs are here right now...just 9 so 11 crates in 4 different rooms. No counting soft crates, those are for hotels and agility trials. 3 rescue kittens in one crate to keep the dogs safe while I'm not home. Had 17 turkey chicks in one wire crate for a week. 2 xpens - one serving a temperory doorway gate, the other one was around the turkey chicks until I moved to the barn

 

I consider crates to be furniture. I may buy 4 more and put plywood over it for a kitchen table. Probably get that done faster than the water will go down and Ashley furniture gets my table delivered post flood.

 

Grumbling here. What's wrong with crates? There is so much more that can go wrong in life!

 

Right now I have two crates in my living room, one in my bedroom and six in the "dog room" (spare bedroom that has no bed--just space for my computer and printer and dog crates). At times, there are more crates in the living room if they're needed for some reason, and for a while when I had a dog in for training who tended to be noisy early in the morning, I put his crate in the dining room/den area because it's on the opposite end of the house and can be closed off behind French doors.

 

If your friends were apalled by crates, I can't imagine what they would have thought when I had a rubber stock tank surrounded by an X-pen and full of chicks in the dining room earlier this year!

 

The big joke around here is the 10,000 partly chewed cow hooves lying all over the place....

 

J.

[ejano]

Well, up until about the snow melted, the boys were crated in the study right off the kitchen. They were a year old in February about the time mud season arrived and somebody got on her high horse and decided she wasn't mopping the floor five times a day and the crates went into the mudroom, which has a separate entrance directly outside. The boys sleep in their crate at night. Ladybug is never crated, except when we're traveling in a car. She can get out of the one we have for her whenever she wants -- when we first got her years ago she bent the bottom post and just pops it out of the slot. She'll stay there for an hour or two and says, that's it, I"m done. You want me out of here, right? She sleeps in our bedroom. She's a Ladybug, does what she wants. But she never abuses the privileges we give her, or rather she takes.

 

We're almost finished converting the mudroom into a proper kennel -- the tile floor is laid, walls painted, all the junk cleaned out. All that's left is to actually build the kennels. The only reason we're doing it is that we want a safe place to put our dogs when a crowd (or just one dumb person - can anyone say brother in law????) comes to visit or we are out of the house. It's got an entirely separate entrance and you don't have to go through it to get to the house either. The last time we had a crowd here we had Ladybug in the back bedroom because she goes from person to person asking everyone to through a ball for her and she's nine years old now and its too much for her... She was being good, watching people out of the window and my dumb brother in law saw her and "felt sorry for her" and thought she'd feel better if he tossed a tennis ball up in the air for her to see....well, she tore the molding off the door trying to get out of the room to get the to ball. He's lucky she didn't go through the window. That was the day Ken finally got behind my kennel project. And from now on, I'll just keep her with me and let the guests take care of themselves. She's a Ladybug after all.

 

Liz

[Alchemist]

One dog, one cat, six crates:

* The cat has his own crate (normally lives in the garage) for those infrequent trips to the vet only. It doubled as a puppy crate for a few weeks; could be easily moved from our bedroom to the car.

* A somewhat larger airplane-style crate I inherited from a friend for those months when Duncan had outgrown the cat crate. Could still be transported from the bedroom to the car, and used as a carrier at the vet's, but was getting unwieldy. That's now been retired to the garage.

* Two large wire crates, both very unwieldy, both fitted with adjustable dividers (now retired). One lives in my office at work, the other is in the family room. I still crate Duncan (at a year of age) when he can't be supervised, but it's rare that this happens more than an hour or two at a time, and I could probably start phasing it out. I sometimes will crate him when he comes indoors filthy from his romp through the woods out back until he dries off and I can brush the dirt off. Didn't stop him in time the other day and he left so many muddy footprints around the house it seemed like a "loaves and fishes" kind of trick. (I would kill for a mud room, Liz).

* One large airline-style crate that lives in our bedroom, also unwieldy. We used to shut him in there at night but now allow him the run of the room when we're sleeping. He always goes into it when we first come upstairs, then after 15 minutes or so will leave. I figure it'll get some use if he needs to fly somewhere.

* One large portable crate that we bought for his "Control Unleashed" class. Not currently getting much use, resides in the garage.

 

Duncan no longer travels in a crate in the car; I either put him in the back of my station wagon (which has a divider separating it from the passenger area) or, if he's in DH's car, he sits on the back seat with his harness attached to the seat belt. No doggie projectiles for me, thanks...

 

Also have five dog beds for this one dog. One each lives in the three large crates (one of these typically migrates to the dining room when we eat dinner). One (a large ortho mattress) in the family room. A second ortho mattress in my office. Do you suppose the 12-step program for crate disorder can extend to dog bed disorder as well?

 

Let's hear it for crate training, by the way. A friend has a ~ 10-month-old dog who jumped out of her car window a few weeks back. X-rays revealed it had fractured its pelvis. Ortho vet said they needed to keep it crated for 8 weeks. Even moving around in the X-pen I lent her was too much activity. Unfortunately her dog (which she got as a rescue) came with severe separation anxiety and HATES to be crated. She's having a rough run of it. Dog is being sedated but still is very unhappy in the crate unless someone is right next to her. Even leaving her alone for 10 minutes causes the dog to try to destroy the crate.

[SecretBC]

Secret, being 9 months old, is the only one who is crated in my house. On average, I tend to use the crate until they're a year old, at which point (or a bit before) I start to test the waters of letting them have free roam of the house.

 

I only have one Secret-sized crate, which is now housed in the living room because that's where the other two dogs hang out when I'm gone. It was mainly in my bedroom until she learned to sleep quietly through the night on the bed -- I would drag it out to the living room any time I left them. Understandably a giant pain, so I probably let her on the bed earlier than I usually would.

 

In the basement, I also have a pile of outgrown crates and my soft-sided kennels & x-pens that I use for agility trials.

[bskeeter]

We have 4 in the family room, 1 in the office and 1 soft sider in the living room. Hmmm, we only have four dogs. I guess I need to take something down.

[DebC]

Two crates, one for each dog - in the dining room. Which has been fine because the dining room is nowhere near being finished! Easy to sweep up.

I dream of having a proper mud room or 3 season room, where the crates could be during all but the coldest monthes - but Bo will be 5 in August, by the time I get anyplace like that to put crates, he'll be sleeping in our room - Dozer was supposed to end up in my son's room, but that isn't done yet either.

So they are in the 'dining' room.

They like their crates - because I can't trust Dozer yet he is in there whenever we are not home, and overnight.

Bo goes to his when Dozer goes to his, so Bo is in anytime Dozer is.

My husband had never heard of crating a dog before we got Bo, now he thinks it's the best thing ever!

[timberviewfarm]

Lets see, I changed my mud/laundry room much to the dismay of my mother into a "dog room". It has 4 crates and 3 dog beds in it. There are 2 crates in my living room and there is a crate in my bedroom......

 

There are deer antlers all over my house along with cow hooves......

 

But the biggest problem isn't the dogs typically when people come over...its the darn stray cats people keep dropping off!! Anyone want a cat? They are all spayed/neutered

[Anda]

Alright, as a non-crate-user, this thread is very, very scary

[ejano]

Alright, as a non-crate-user, this thread is very, very scary

 

But you've only got the one dog and he's like Ladybug a different sort of species altogether....when we had only one dog, we had no crate........the crate is really for the dog's protection. Humans can be very stupid. Witness my brother in law.

 

Liz

[hsnrs]

We have one crate in the bedroom.

[njnovice]

But you've only got the one dog and he's like Ladybug a different sort of species altogether....when we had only one dog, we had no crate........the crate is really for the dog's protection. Humans can be very stupid. Witness my brother in law.

 

Liz

 

I have two and I don't have any crates...Mick hasn't been crated since he was about 7 months old. He might be a giant ass in many ways, but he's always been good in the house.

[rushdoggie]

Let's hear it for crate training, by the way. A friend has a ~ 10-month-old dog who jumped out of her car window a few weeks back. X-rays revealed it had fractured its pelvis. Ortho vet said they needed to keep it crated for 8 weeks. Even moving around in the X-pen I lent her was too much activity. Unfortunately her dog (which she got as a rescue) came with severe separation anxiety and HATES to be crated. She's having a rough run of it. Dog is being sedated but still is very unhappy in the crate unless someone is right next to her. Even leaving her alone for 10 minutes causes the dog to try to destroy the crate.

 

 

I have always felt it was my responsibility to teach all my animals (dogs, cats and the parrot when I had him) to accept a few things, like being bathed, firmly restrained and comfortable in a crate (or carrier, or small cage). That way, if I have to evacuate my home in an emergency, or stay with a friend who doesn't like pets, or my pet gets sick and has to be kenneled at the vet, its not as traumatic or stressful.

[airbear]

Alright, as a non-crate-user, this thread is very, very scary

LOL! Well, I guess I should confess I have no crates in my three-dog household. My dogs ride in crates in the van, they spend trial days either in their crates or tied out, and if I can't crate in the van at agility trials, then they share a 36" ex-pen. I have four crates (three in the van in active duty, one in the garage) because for a brief time I had four dogs. But yeah, I know a few people who have a 2:1 (or more!) ratio of crates to dogs.

[juliepoudrier]

I have two and I don't have any crates...Mick hasn't been crated since he was about 7 months old. He might be a giant ass in many ways, but he's always been good in the house.

For some of us, it's not *at all* about whether the dogs are "good" in the house. It's about managing pack dynamics safely when the human isn't around to make sure nothing untoward happens. When I had just one or two dogs, I'm sure I had crates, but we just didn't use them (I belong to that subset of folks who believe that crate training is important for emergencies--like the time I had to evacuate from northeastern NC in the face of a hurricane and loaded my van with however many dogs I had at the time, plus 6 cats, plus a bunch of chickens--all safely in crates). With 10 living in the house, some of whom just do not get along and one of whom could have a seizure at a random time (which in the world of dogs could make her vulnerable to attack), it's safest to confine at least some of them when I have to leave for more than a very short period of time.

 

Also, when friends come over to work dogs and we want to, say, go get lunch, it's nice to have places to put *their* dogs so they don't have to be left in vehicles. And then there's the necessity to have a place for dogs who come in for training since I don't necessarily want to integrate someone else's dog into my pack, nor do I want such a dog running loose in my house at night.

 

As for crate ratios, the last thing I want to have to do is move crates from van to house and back again, so I have crates that live in the van and crates that stay in the house, making it very easy to reach that 2:1 ratio. I can't explain Laura, the crate hoarder, however, who probably has a 3:1 ratio or better!

 

J.

[mbc1963]

I have two and I don't have any crates...Mick hasn't been crated since he was about 7 months old. He might be a giant ass in many ways, but he's always been good in the house.

 

Sorry, I couldn't resist:

 

 

Mary

[Malvie]

Couple more things (to the "don't crate" folks)

 

I've found (as someone else above) that my dogs will go in their crates by themselves if they want a nap. "Security" for them.

 

In the van, I've found the crates a great help. Lucy wants to help me drive, and she wants to do it suddenly sometimes. I'll be driving along and suddenly have a 40 lb lovable Border Collie in my lap. Additionally, the wheels of the 18-wheelers bother all three of them. Secure in their "houses", they don't see the wheels, therefore aren't frightened.

 

I was always a, "I'm never going to CAGE my DOG(s)!!!" person, until I was at a friends' house; hers loved his crate and stayed in there voluntarily. That's when I came around.

[PSmitty]

Sorry, I couldn't resist:

 

 

Mary

 

LOVE it!! I have to admit that crossed my mind, too.

[border_collie_crazy]

2 200's and 1 300 are lined up in the kitchen under the breakfast bar, and the 500 is in the bathroom just off the kitchen(that bathroom as an extended area where a bedroom as been removed before we moved in). those are the crates that are used..there is also 2 200's in the basement acting as tables for gerbil cages and 4 more collapsed in the laundry room.

 

my BFF keeps her dogs crate in the bedroom closest..not to hide it but because she has 2 kids, a house so small that her "master" bedroom is about the size of a queen bed and a large crate trained dog, the closet is the only place the crate fits!

[njnovice]

Sorry, I couldn't resist:

 

 

Mary

 

LOL, he did that once...right after I cleaned the mail off it. He normally sleeps either on a blanket in the dining room or my bed.