There is nothing more pathetic than seeing a novice who arrives with a good quality dog ​​and insists on dragging him from here to find two or three hours before entering the ring, exposing him to heat, contact with countless dogs and people and then see him go into the ring to lose because of the poor performance of the dog because he is literally mentally and physically exhausted. That’s why I even decided to dedicate a chapter of my podcast (in Spanish) to this topic.

The crate should not be conceptualized as a prison, on the contrary, it is a place where our dog’s energies are going to be contained, relaxed so that when we go the ring, we can manage his energy in such a way that the dog looks its best. It’s his den, his private space, his comfort zone.

There are many qualities that a handler must have, I have already mentioned some in my previous contributions to this publication and correctly managing the dog’s energies is one of the most important.

The best way to explain this is with what I call: “The Russian Theory.” I explain myself; It was the year of 2017, we were in California in a place call City of Industry and coincidentally I met a Russian girl, handler, who bravely had ventured to come to work in order to learn under the baton of my friend Jorge Olivera. She had already been working for a few weeks and attending numerous dog shows in the California area and since I have always been very interested in different points of view, I thought that knowing hers would be very enriching, since her cultural and dog fanciers roots were very different than mine, I asked him what she thought of the way dogs work in the US and what his impressions were of our uses and customs.

What she answered told me a lot of material for reflection. She said that the idea that they have in Europe of American handlers is based on videos on YouTube, generally filmed in glamorous shows like Westminster and that she thought that some special and specific technique was used here for the dogs to reach that level of glamor and perfection when it show, but that in reality what she saw and I quote it almost literally.

– “I see that what you do is that you leave the dog in a crate and then take him out of it, take him to the ring and he arrives eager to express himself.”

That phrase precisely condenses the convenience of having our dog well accustomed to being relaxed in the crate, we must consider it as an energy manager, a place where the dog can abstract from the environment and arrive physically and above all mentally fresh at the ring.

But let’s start at the beginning, how does we train our dog to be in the crate in a relaxed way? Well, we must do it with a gradual process. Whatever the age of our puppy, we should start putting him in the crate for short periods, say an hour, if we can do it accompanied by a sibling or a stuffed animal, that will help him to be less anxious, with the passing of days and weeks we can increase the time during the crate and we must also leave the cage open during the day so that he only seeks refuge there, which happens very commonly.

Put the same bed for several days in the cage to encourage him to seek to get in since it has the own smell of it. Crate feeding can also be a good idea, most puppies have a voracious appetite, and this will cause a mental association with a positive event such as eating. Being used to the cage will also allow us to have access to some hotels that require dogs to be in a cage even if the dog going to fly in the cage, the fact that he is used to being in it for long periods will help the task.

Now, so far I have talked about the advantages that the crate brings to the dog. But it also brings advantages to humans. The fact of being able to leave our dog in the crate will allow us to have a social life, we will be able to make friends, see the detailed judgments of our and other breeds in order to continue learning. Perhaps disciplining our dogs to travel in the crate is the only way in which we can travel with more dogs, we can even think of having a travel companion to keep us company and lower costs on long journeys. If our dog has to be lose all this would not be possible. The crate is a safe place and should be conceptualized as such.

Advantages, advantages, advantages. The crate is a tool at our disposal that well used will allow us to have a more pleasant experience with our dog, we win or lose.

I would love to hear from you at www.dogscoonection.net, let me know if you have any problems crate training your dog, or what your experiences have been.

Until next time. “The best is yet to come.”