First Nights in the Crate
Building the crate into a place Arlo actually wants to be — the foundation every calm, confident working dog is built on.
Crate training isn’t about confinement — it’s about giving a dog a room of his own. In the first week we focused on making the crate the best real estate in the house: fed him near it, tossed treats inside, and never used it as a consequence.
The payoff came fast. By the end of the week Arlo was wandering into the crate on his own to nap, door wide open. That voluntary “I’ll just put myself to bed” is the behavior we were after — the seed of the off-switch a working dog needs as much as the on-switch.
More detailed training notes and the exact routine are on the way as we build out the Field Journal.
