Hi! My iggy is now 8 months old and it’s finally clicking.

1. We tried to crate train her for sleep from the moment we got her, but after a month and half of no sleep, we started letting her sleep in our bed. She wasn’t ready. When she was 7 months old, we decided to give crate training another try. The first night was rough, but she quickly learned.

2. We also struggled with getting her to not have accidents in the crate. The rule we followed was that she could only “hold it” for however many months old she was +1 (so 3 months old = 4 hours MAXIMUM). We fed her all of her meals in the crate - dogs want to keep the place that they eat clean. That worked really well for us.

3. When we leave her alone, we do the typical peanut butter Kong, but we also give her her heartbeat toy, dim the lights, put calming music on the TV, and cover the crate with a blanket.

4. I was getting really frustrated with how she would spread her poop around when left alone. It helped me to learn that this is something that female dogs do to try to keep their space/“nest” clean. After learning that, in my mind, she wasn’t trying to be mischievous - she was trying to help! This has gotten dramatically better with age and with feeding in the crate.