My dog...

Broke out of his crate today. DH came home to find him waiting by the front door. There is minimal damage to the crate and my dog is fine but this is a first...has this happen to anyone else? Now the question is to crate or not to crate?

Re: My dog...

If he didn't damage anything, why not leave him free for a few hours to test him out.

Re: My dog...

Yup it happened to us with our second dog. There's a thread here somewhere about it. We were afraid she would hurt herself because she broke out of an impossibly smalll spot and she's a big dog.

So we videotaped her out of the crate when we would leave and found that she still had anxiety but didnt damage anything. We worked in that and now she's over that too.

How old is your dog a.d how long has he been crate trained? Is he trained on everything else? Ifso, maybe it's time to trust.

Re: My dog...

Same thing happened to us when our dog was about 8 months old. We left him out after that and everything was fine. The only thing he damaged were the blinds in the front window so he could wait for us to come home.

Re: My dog...

My dog is about 2.5 years old...he is a rescue that was in hoarding situation and was treated aggressively by his former owners. He has made amazing progress but he has had issues with separation anxiety. He is crated due to the separation anxiety not because we do not trust him in the house alone. It was the recommendation of the animal behaviorist to keep him in the crate so he had a safe place to relax when we were out. Up until Friday we had no signs that he was unhappy in the crate. We have worked with him on the separation anxiety and he has improved significantly but something is up...we have tried to leave him uncrated in the past and it seemed the anxiety was worse. I am concerned he is going to get hurt trying to break out of the crate so I am going to have to try leaving him out.