Choosing and Using a Crate

The crate you buy for a Maltese is small, cheap, and lasts the dog's lifetime. The mistakes people make are buying one that is too big, which defeats the housebreaking, or using it for too long, which defeats the dog. This page is about the equipment and the rules; the step by step page is about the training.

Size

Big enough for the adult dog to stand up, turn round and lie flat, and no bigger. For a Maltese that is the smallest size most makers sell, around twenty-two to twenty-four inches long. A crate with room to sleep at one end and soil the other is not a crate the puppy will keep clean, which is the whole point. Because the adult is still small, you can buy the adult size from the start; there is no need to size up as the puppy grows, as there would be with a larger breed.

Type

A wire crate folds flat, has air on every side, lets the puppy see the room, and can be covered with a towel at night to make a den. It is the one we use in the house. A plastic airline-style crate is more enclosed, which some dogs prefer, and it is the one that goes in a car. A soft fabric crate is light and fine for travel with an adult dog that is already crate trained, and useless for a puppy, which will chew its way out. Whatever you buy, check the bar spacing; a Maltese puppy's head fits through a surprising gap.

Where

In the room where the family is, during the day, and beside your bed at night, at least for the first weeks. A crate in a utility room teaches a puppy that the crate means being left; a crate beside the sofa teaches it that the crate means being with you, asleep. Out of draughts, out of direct sun, away from radiators and away from anything the puppy can pull through the bars.

What goes in

A towel, a fleece or a cheap washable pad. Not a cushion with stuffing, which a teething puppy will open and eat. One safe chew, rubber or nylon, sized for a small mouth. Water, in a bowl that clips to the bars so it cannot be tipped, if the dog will be in for more than an hour. No collar, ever; a collar or tag caught in the wire can strangle a dog.

Crate and pen together

For anyone who works, or for a puppy under four months that cannot be crated for long, the right setup is a wire pen, four to six feet across, with the open crate at one end, water in the middle, and a washable pad or litter tray at the other. The puppy sleeps in the crate, has a legitimate place to relieve itself, and cannot reach anything in the house. It is the arrangement we use for our own puppies and it is how a toy breed can be housebroken by someone who is out all day.

How long

Roughly an hour for each month of age in the day, up to four or five hours at most for an adult, and never a whole working day in a closed crate; that is what the pen is for. Overnight is different; a sleeping dog can go longer, and most puppies manage the night within a couple of weeks. A Maltese that is crated for eight hours every day is not being housed, it is being stored, and it will show in its temperament.

The rules

The crate is never a punishment. Nobody reaches in to pull the dog out. Children do not open it, climb on it or poke through it. The dog is let out when it is quiet, not when it is crying. It goes out to relieve itself immediately before and immediately after every crating. And the door stays open whenever the dog is free in the house, so it can go in on its own, which it will, which is the sign that the crate has become what it should be: the dog's own room.

Travel

A crate-trained Maltese travels easily: the plastic crate buckles into the car, goes under the seat on an aircraft, and sets up in a hotel room as a familiar bed in a strange place. Our puppies that go to new homes by flight nanny travel in a carrier in the cabin and arrive having learned, in the first hours of their new life, that a small enclosed space with their blanket in it is safe. The crate training you do at home builds on that.