Priya Finds The Value In Crate Training For Arthur

Priya share’s a story about how crate training has improved her day-to-day with her Greek rescue dog Arthur and how they plan to build on that to help him further.

*CRATE TRAINING*

I'd been on HH previously um-ing and ahm-ing about crate training. For nearly 5 years we've had Arthur and never once have we got it out. It wasn't until we reached out to Kym that we finally decided that we had to try it - we were very quickly running out of ideas.

Last night, Arthur was doing his usual thing of following me around the kitchen. We joke about how he has no personal space because he is ALWAYS under our feet, but it turns out he might be 'sheriffing' (an excellent term coined by Kym which we use all the time now!). He was being an absolute pain in the arse, so I told him to go his place and shut the door on him.

Whilst I recognise I probably need to be careful about shutting the door if his sole purpose is to follow me around, and I don't want to make the crate a bad space, it showed me how far he and I have both come; I didn't feel at all bad for closing the door, and he promptly lay down and went to sleep - a sure sign that he needed direction to just chill the f*** out!

We've loved the crate so much, we've actually bought a travel one to put in a separate room in the hope Arthur will be able to settle away from visitors (our current one is in the middle of our open plan living room). It's also going to be excellent for putting in the car so hopefully he'll be comfortable enough to lie down and go to sleep instead of car surfing the entire time!

I didn't know the crate would be such an invaluable tool but I'm so, so glad we've found it. Really hoping that we can utilise it well enough that eventually, Arthur can be around visitors without wanting to eat them 🫠