TL;DR we have a crate with pen around it. 14wo puppy has (for the two weeks we've had him) been able to choose where he sleeps, but often seems to choose crate. How would you approach taking the pen away – crate train first with pen still in place, or take pen away to assist with crate training?
Full context:
We have a 14-week-old westie puppy. He came to us 2 weeks ago. It's very difficult, of course, but he is definitely getting more settled and familiar with us, his new home, being a dog and interacting with us, other people and dogs. We are getting better at observing and meeting his needs. He's picking up some commands quite nicely and sleeps a good 6 hour stretch over night in a different room to us without needing to pee or poop.
Our current set-up is a crate (it's like a piece of furniture – wooden, but with bars on the front and sides) with a playpen around it. We are feeding him in the crate – he knows to go in there for food. He seems somewhat comfortable in there and we have started experimenting with closing the door during meals and occasionally for naps, but there's still work to be done.
Generally speaking, we've left the crate open to give him access to both pen and crate and he can choose to sleep in either. He'll often end up in the crate and we'll find him in there in the morning. Unfortunately the camera we bought has a really stupid, loud "connected to WiFi" alert and we are worried it could go off in the night and disturb him so we've not been able to observe his movements. The crate/pen set-up was intended to give him autonomy and confidence as he acclimatises, because he had a bit more freedom/space at his breeder's home, but we think it may have been a bad choice because we've not been absolutely enforcing crate-sleeping so we'll essentially have to start from scratch.
So far he's slept in the crate with the door closed only on a couple of occasions for daytime naps of at most 2 hours and we haven't done a full night in crate. He has had a couple of pee incidents in the crate, but only when his woolly topper is on the bed. Most incidents have been in the pen instead, but even these are getting rarer.
We realise there is the task of building up his tolerance of crating so he can spend the whole night in there. But I actually want to ask: what would you do with the pen? Would you leave it around the crate during crate-training so it isn't a big change to his current familiar space, or would you just take it away?
submitted by /u/JigWM
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