Crate training a Weim is NOT about lock-down
If you do it that way you’re going to end up with a neurotic quivering mess of a dog who screams the instant that door shuts if that’s how you approach it. It took a long time and a trial by fire with my own first Weim, a gray ghost named Archer who spent crate time turning into a weekly full-brush panic attack, so I swear that I have lived this and it is true. I read every article on crate training, follow all of the procedures, play the “special crate treat” game, lock the door, set the timer, leave the room for five minutes, repeat every five minutes, put in levels of Kong and freeze them, come back every ten minutes etc… nobody ever told me that Weimaraners are Velcro dogs bred to do absolutely everything with their humans and that regular old crate protocols are likely to make the settling thing a hundred times worse without addressing the core issue.
Build Safety First
The mistake I made with Archer was using the crate as tool of my convenience instead of a place where he genuinely felt safe and now that I’m more aware I can do this better. Skip closing the door entirely for the first three weeks, leave it wide open and place his bed in there, feed his meals in there, drop improved treats in there everywhere during the day, let him go in there to nap. That was the sign I was waiting for – he wanted to be in there ever since he so consistently chose it.
Gradually Close the Door
We went from there and only then did I start closing the door behind him while I was sitter in the room, doing work, reading a book, whatever, just right beside the crate, for two minutes, then three, then five, ten, until it didn’t elicit the response of having a fit (so many own terms in this article I apologize but I think you get the point). No fuss, no frills, no standing in the dog’s face praising it like you’re two seconds from winning the World Dog Championship. Simply part of life.
Be Boring and Consistent
From there I was boring about it, as repetition and repeated boring behavior are what seem to matter more than sheer techniques at times. The Weimarainer is the king (or queen) of context sensitive learning and they remember the world around them, and their history with you, and they’re massief irritants when you cater to their reticence with their crates. We couldn’t get anywhere with them until I realized the timing of their walks was just as potent as the crate time itself, that a Weim with pent-up energy will contest without even a consideration about the crate, his body physically just won’t let him, so I began scheduling and following through with a 45-minute run or fetch session prior to crate time and you would simply not believe the chunk of different dog I got.
Mind you, tired enough to fall asleep on command but not so exhausted that retiring to a chair is just too awesome not to: I begun to discover the wow- there’s a balanced state of normal out there, and the iteration is mind bending. The other thing we didn’t discuss here: there are many who believe covering the crate is a good idea and others who vehemently preach the opposite. There are even one claim one way and the other dog within your ranks so you’ll have to experiment and find out what works for each of them.
Critical Do’s and Don’ts
What I am sure of: do NOT punish the crate. Don’t take them to the crate and smack their bottom, don’t put them in there and give them a stern lecture, don’t put them in the crate and walk out for fifteen minutes then head back. Weimaraners have fantastic fucking memories and if that crate comes to symbolize your wrath or their crime then you’ve just utterly rotted the process.
The other thing and possibly the most important: quit letting your Weim have a meltdown to start with. I know it’s hard, and the sound they make could be mistaken for a full trumpet concert wake up call. But when you let your Weim out after they scream at the top of their lungs for five minutes you just taught them that the sound of their mouth will get them the one thing they are desperately demanding: you to pay attention to them.
Count to three when they howl, just three, that gets you to their target time window. Drop down into the five second count, just as much. If their head is recoiling back into the room while they’re making a noise you have officially trained them that the noise gets them the opposite of what you want.
And they will make that noise next time, again and again because animals (as we all tend to understand this work sucky) repeat their behaviors when they are reinforced. (I understand that we ARE referring to punishing in a different way here bu