When housebreaking black labradors, using a crate can be quite helpful.

You need to be careful, though, to avoid a few hazards in order to make this process a success.

First of all, avoid using the crate to punish your dog for bad behavior. This sends the message to your puppy that the crate is a bad place to be, and if you do something wrong, that’s where you go. The crate needs to be seen as a safe, comfortable place that your dog will want to go in willingly. Resistance to the crate can sabotage your housebreaking efforts.

Second, make sure that you have the right size crate selected for your labrador. Crates should be big enough for him to get into and turn around, but not much bigger than that. If you put your puppy in an adult sized kennel, there will be too much room to move around, and he will very likely have an accident inside. As he gets bigger, you will need to increase the size of the kennel to accommodate him.

Third, be reasonable about how long you leave your puppy in the kennel. Remember that they can only go a few hours before needing to go to the bathroom again, and if he’s left inside all day, you will be coming home to an accident. Give your puppy the best chance of success by starting with short periods of time and gradually lengthen the intervals. If this is difficult to do, see if there’s a friend or family member who can help out. If there’s no way to let your dog out every few hours, perhaps you should consider whether having a puppy is the right move for you at this time.

Avoid these pitfalls and master crate training, and you find yourself the proud owner of black labradors ready and willing to take on the next step in labrador training.

Michael enjoys sharing his passion and knowledge on black lab dogs with dog owners around the world. Check out more of his articles on labrador retriever training and other topics on his blog.

A joyful pup and its mistress once passed me on their walk in the park. The joy in the puppy’s half step half hop was quite evident. To it, every moving blade of grass was an investigative Sherlock Holmes mystery to be unraveled.

Moments later, you hear a repeated high pitched yap yap yap yap and the deeper growl of a less playful dog. Without turning, you already know the problem. Playful puppy has been stopped dead in its tracks by another dog which may not be quite under control of its master.

In many parts of North America that problem dog is actually a dog that has inherent anger problems perhaps due to an owner who wasn’t loving and caring or problems due to inbreeding and or its part of its gene makeup.

A few weeks ago, as I was petting the head of the dog a few doors down, my neighbor recounted this story about this half puppy half wolf.

A little less than a year prior, he had chained his big wolf puppy to the tail gate of his chevy pickup. He had then gone inside for lunch while the puppy played outside. He says he wasn’t inside more than about 15 minutes before a deep snarl and a shout caused him to run to the front door.

A pitbull was running full out at high speed with its owner running behind holding an empty leash. The pit bull crossed his front lawn in the blink of an eye and was airborne before anyone could as much as move a few feet. His own puppy backed up against the vehicle and waited silent and expectantly for the rushing pit Bull.

This all happened at high speed, but when the Pit Bull leaps high for his dog’s throat with uncanny speed, his dog was eerily not there anymore. It was airborne and above the pit bull. As the pit bull landed and simultaneously twisted, my neighbor’s half wolf clamped its jaws on the Pit Bulls neck and held it motionless while the pit Bull shook itself viciously backwards and forwards.

A very low wolf like growl emitted from my neighbors dog. For a moment the pitBull went slack and the half wolf tossed it about 2 meters.

The pit bull landed and without touching ground ( that’s what witnesses say ) twisted and was airborne across the 10 feet distance. The slightly bigger half wolf puppy crouched and met the pit Bull midair but this time instead of warning it, it snapped its neck and well, that was that.

The whole thing couldn’t have taken more than 5 seconds, both owners were shocked and stupefied. The half wolf puppy backed away from the still body of the pitBull and sank down as its eyes looked around at the by then growing audience.

I don’t wish any animal ill, but we were later told that that pit bull was already under probation for having attacked a child the year before. In Ontario, a dog can be put down for that behavior but apparently this happened weeks before some law was passed and the witnesses had differing stories so the pit bull was in its owners care while the case was being decided.

Who knows, sometimes nature itself is the great equalizer. Everyone there was certain as they told the story afterward, that the puppy was a goner. No one had thought that there was quite that much quickness or wolf like strength and self preservation in that quiet puppy.

The story of the extremely aggressive pit bull and the half wolf puppy. Discover also how to go about training aggressive an dog

Separation Anxiety is one of the most common problems besetting dog owners. Anxiety causes the dog to display annoying behavior such as barking when it is left in the house. If this is tolerated, ignored or allowed to advance, your dog might become a menace, or it might create so much noise when left alone.

The Sources of Dog Separation Anxiety

Dogs are social animals. They have that certain sense of attachment to their master. Because of this attachment, it has a tendency to get overly agitated when left behind. It is important to note that anxiety is not caused by the mere attachment of the dog to its master, but by specific actions or pattern of events you take that it can connect to your absence. Dogs don’t want to be left behind, but its anxiety is not directly connected to your departure.

Separation anxiety occurs when you lavish your attention to your dog before you leave or when you arrive. You could also be doing a pattern of the same activities before you depart. Dogs can easily tag a sequence of activities overtime, and they will know that you are leaving. As the dog’s behavior is reinforced on a daily basis, time will come that it cannot contain its anxiety anymore, and anxiety is manifested.

Reducing Dog Separation Anxiety

Separation anxiety can actually be reduced in a variety of ways. Some of the known ones are:

Change Your Routine. Make changes to your routines, especially your pre-departure habits. Dogs are very attentive creatures. They can tag a pattern of a series of activities that are repeated overtime. Make sure to change your daily pre-departure activities so that the dog can not retain a particular pattern of your activities. This will help to slowly reduce your dog’s anxiety.

Don’t Reinforce it. Ignoring your dog for at least 10 minutes before you leave or upon your arrival will help to make the dog forget the connection of your departure to the attention that it gets. Petting a dog before leaving it on only reinforces its anxious behavior. Another way of preventing your dog from developing separation anxiety is to put it through crate training, or placing them in a separate room in the house, or leaving the house and coming back at varying intervals.

Building Up to Longer Times. A dog’s separation anxiety can be removed by altering its expectations, like the length of time that you will be away. As you see the dog getting anxious as you head for the door you can always choose to take time to extend your departure or leave the house for shorter intervals, then come back. Your dog will not be as anxious as they often see you coming back in a short period. From here, you can already start to extend the length of time that you will be away without your dog taking notice of it anymore.

You’re Not Being Mean

Separation anxiety is a behavior that should be stopped, and the way to eliminate it is not an act of cruelty. It is a way of helping your dog to behave normally and be free from stress. The act of altering predictable activity patterns and refraining from giving the dog lavish attention is a display of authority that the dog knows by instinct. Dogs that are free from anxiety and stress are happy pets.

Persistent anxiety problems need to be resolved as early as possible before they can aggravate into a more complex behavior problem. You can eliminate or reduce separation anxiety by not petting them before leaving and upon your arrival. Your dog should not be made to remember this connection to make it free from dog separation anxiety.

You will find out how Stan Beck’s Dog Training Methods can help you reduce your dog’s Separation Anxiety and other problems.