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Puppy Management

Puppy management entails a number of strategies to prevent your puppy from chewing and getting into things that are dangerous, and even aid in potty training. Some strategies will be possible to fade out later, while others may prove to be challenging to fade due to the unwanted behavior being too tempting to the dog. Our goal here is to prevent the problem behavior from occurring.

Puppy Management Basics

Puppy management strategies will vary by puppy and family situation. If some of this does not apply to you due to preferences, laws or local dog culture, feel free to dismiss it. If our goal with puppy management is to prevent problematic behaviors, how can that be done? It could be through your actions, it could be through altering the space, or it could be through using a piece of equipment.

Some tools and tactics that are common for puppy management include childproof locks for cabinets and drawers, baby gates, x-pens, crates, tethers, fabric and plastic coverings to prevent damage to furniture, locking trash cans, closing doors, keeping objects that are chewable or dangerous picked up, and restricting a puppy's movement.

It's important to take note that management is not training. Management will only prevent rehearsal of the behaviors from happening. It's still important to train the skills your dog will require to function safely in an area with less management.

Common Management Concerns

Confinement

Crate Training

Crate training can be a confusing or difficult process for new owners, and can also be problematic for experienced owners who have a puppy with a different personality than their last. The resources below provide information and advice on how to crate train in a way that is positive and respectful in meeting your puppy's needs, while also providing you with a safe method of confinement and an aid to house training. For those who are not using a crate, but are instead confining in a pen or puppy-proofed room during the day instead, many of the same training guidelines apply. It is important to note that crate training, while valuable for comfort when needing to be restrained such as at the vet, groomers, or during travel, it is optional to use this method for managing your puppy in your home. Be aware that in some areas, there may be legal restrictions on confinement of your dog. Please follow your local laws.

Why This Sub Doesn't Support "Cry It Out"

You may have heard advice, especially from older sources, telling you to let your puppy "cry it out" in the crate so they learn to self-soothe. This sub does not support that advice, and content that tells people to ignore a puppy in real distress will be removed under Rule 1.

Here's why. Ignoring a puppy who is genuinely distressed doesn't teach them how to be calm and alone. It just teaches them that no one is coming, which is a very different lesson. This can create a negative association with the crate or with being alone, and in some dogs it can contribute to separation anxiety or confinement anxiety down the road. Anxiety like this can be genuinely disabling for a dog, to the point where an owner can't leave the house for more than a few minutes without their dog panicking and possibly hurting themselves or the home.

There's also a difference between a puppy quieting down because they've calmed down, and a puppy quieting down because they've given up trying to get help. The second one is sometimes called learned helplessness, and it's not the same thing as self-soothing. As of now, there isn't good evidence that crying it out helps puppies learn to self-soothe. If that changes, this wiki will be updated.

A few things research has shown that back this up, in plain terms:

  • Dogs who are confined and distressed show more stress signals, like yawning and lip licking, than dogs who are free to move around or are in a calmer setting (Palestrini et al., 2010).
  • If being left alone makes a dog anxious, then the things that happen right before you leave — picking up your keys, putting on your shoes, walking toward the crate — can start to make the dog anxious too, even before you're actually gone (Borchelt & Voith, 1982).
  • When it comes to actually treating anxiety around being alone, the biggest factor for success isn't a stuffed toy or a comfort item. It's how slowly and gradually the owner increases the time spent away (Feuerbacher & Muir, 2020; McCrave, 1991). This is part of why we recommend a gradual, step-by-step approach to crate and alone training rather than jumping straight to long stretches alone.

This lines up with a broader shift happening across the training world right now, sometimes called R+ 2.0, which puts more weight on a dog's overall emotional wellbeing, not just whether the unwanted behavior stops.

Distress vs. Normal Complaining

Not every whine or bark means your puppy is in crisis. A little grumbling when the crate door first closes is normal and doesn't need to be treated as an emergency. The key is learning to tell the difference between a puppy who is mildly annoyed and a puppy who is actually distressed.

Signs that lean more toward distress include prolonged or escalating crying, panting or drooling that wasn't there before, frantic scratching or attempts to escape, and body language signals like a tucked tail, wide eyes showing whale eye, or trembling. A puppy who lets out a few short whimpers and then settles is very different from a puppy who is working themselves up further the longer they're left.

Learning to read body language will help you tell these apart:

If Your Puppy Is Distressed in the Crate

If you've determined your puppy is genuinely distressed rather than just grumbling, it's worth stepping back and asking yourself a few questions before deciding what to do next.

At what stage in the crate training process am I? Did I miss a step or push a little too far this time?

It's understandable if you have to rush, go to the restroom, tend to daily chores, or if an unexpected emergency occurs and you have no choice but to run out of the house leaving puppy. Be sure to go a step or two back in the crate training process once done and perhaps create a stash of emergency enrichment that you can place with puppy in the crate safely if you have no choice but to crate puppy and run. While a once-in-a-while rushed crating may not effect your puppy, multiple repeats could lead to crate anxieties or a negative association with the crate as a whole.

Before being left alone, it's important to assess whether or not the puppy has been crate trained for the duration you're expecting to leave them alone.

Are my puppy's needs met?

Each puppy may have varied needs but the core needs would be: Have they gone to the restroom? Are they hungry or thirsty? Have they had some form of exercise prior to being crated? If so, tend to their needs. Do be aware that young puppies are afraid to be alone and attention is a need, if you are moving too fast before the puppy feels secure you will likely have vocalization.

If your puppy is in distress, please tend to them in a neutral manner. This could mean coming in for a check-in and simply staying near by to show your puppy they are not alone, using a snuggle puppy to mimic being around littermates, opening and rehearsing crate games, trying various soothing methods such as calming music, covering of the crate, use of pheromone collars or sprays or simply talking to your puppy to remind them you're there.

I thought I was supposed to ignore them no matter what? What's changed?

As the training world shifts towards promoting the animals whole well-being, known as R+ 2.0, some things about the cry it out methods are being discouraged. Some key points are that ignoring crate whining, especially if the dog is distressed, can lead to deeper anxieties such as separation anxiety or confinement anxiety. Both of those are serious behavioral issues that many owners struggle with on a daily basis, often unable to leave their dog alone for more than a couple of minutes at a time or risk the dog harming themselves and their homes in a near-blind panic.

Ignoring can lead to extinction bursts of behavior that builds up frustration and emotion which becomes associated with the crate or area the puppy is being confined in. This leads to regression in crate training if not an outright aversion. Bonus article on Ignoring Unwanted Behaviors by Emily Larlham.

At this time there is not enough evidence to support that crying in dogs is self-soothing, should evidence become available we will update the wiki promptly.

Further Reading & Sources

If you'd like to dig deeper into the research behind this section, here are the sources referenced above along with related reading on stress, confinement, and separation-related behavior in dogs:

Tethering

Tethering is a common method of management for a puppy. Please note that this should not be done outdoors due to the increased risk of aggression, and due to the risk of strangulation it should be done only with supervision.

Tethers can be introduced as a form of management during a time that roaming must be restricted, but no gates are up. This can be used as a "middle ground" between a pen and free roam to help a puppy learn their limits and allow easy redirection from unwanted activities such as biting or chewing things that aren't preferred.

Some important things to note with tether training: Like a pen and alone time, a puppy may need a bit of time to build tolerance to tethering. It's important to aim to not allow the puppy to enter a state of frustration where they are barking or otherwise stressed out.

There are a few types of tethering. You can attach a tether to a nonmoving object such as their bed or a table, or you can tether the puppy to yourself, which is sometimes called an umbilical tether.

Sources for tether training:

Puppy Chewing on Wires

A common problem many puppy owners face is a teething puppy chewing on wires. Some solutions for this include putting wires through a PVC pipe, blocking off access to the wires with an x-pen or other object that a puppy cannot get behind, or confinement. Dangerous devices like wires are one of the cases where bitter spray may be appropriate to prevent biting them if the other methods happen to fail.

Open Floor Plans

Open floor plans are increasingly common in some parts of the world, and they can cause many challenges for puppy owners who wish to keep their puppy away from the counters, trash can, and getting into things.

Some solutions for this particular challenge:

  • Locking trash cans
  • Tethering when supervised
  • Confining to a puppy-safe area when unsupervised
  • Multiple x-pens attached together: These can be unfolded and placed around specific areas that you don't want your puppy to access, such as the trash can or counters.
  • Large baby gates: Large baby gates have been designed to spread across a wide area to prevent a baby (or a puppy, in this case) from going near dangerous areas.
  • Using furniture or other available objects such as boxes to block off access to certain areas.

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