Help! My Puppy Hates the Crate

Does this scenario sound familiar? Your puppy will happily walk into their crate for a wildly desirable treat. But, once the treat is gone, so is your puppy’s patience. He starts to yowl. While you want to wait to release him until he’s quiet, it’s emotionally fraught to listen to his bewildered barks.

It’s a common crate training dilemma, but there is a solution.

Slowly Build Duration

Here is something I tried with a puppy recently and it seemed to work very well. Once the puppy runs into the crate, eats his treat and turns around to come out the door, say “wait,” close the crate door and then open it. Don’t lock the door or leave it shut even for a second. Just tap it shut, click the clicker, open the door, and treat him when he comes out.

Do this a few times until you can see his little puppy brain start to work. Then, the next time you do it, say “wait,” count one or two seconds, click the clicker, open the door, and give him a treat when he comes out. Each time (maybe 2-3 times a day), increase the number of seconds very gradually (by one or two seconds) until you get to 30 seconds. Then you can start increasing it by 5-10 seconds at a time. I find that I have to work very, very gradually in the beginning, maybe even not increasing it at all for several times in a row, but once I get to a few minutes, I can increase the time by 5 minutes at a time, and it’s much easier. Later I can increase it by 10-15 minutes at a time.

I actually set a kitchen timer to the desired time so I don’t forget and leave him in there forever, because I want to let him out BEFORE he gets impatient and starts whining. I don’t open the door as soon as the timer goes off, because I don’t want him to think that the timer is the click.

You can see that after a while, this becomes a game to the puppy and he is willing to perform the “wait” for a wonderful treat. To make it even easier for him to wait, you can start adding desired things like chew toys to the inside of the crate.

Make it Special 

With my dogs, I always give them certain toys in the crate that they can’t take out with them when they leave, such as a long-lasting chew. I just remove it as they exit. Then you can put chew toy back in there and shut the door to the crate when they exit the crate. After a while, they will ask to go in the crate so they can play with the toy.

You don’t have to keep any of these training methods up forever. You don’t need to, after you have created the positive associations.

Done properly, dogs just adore their crates and will opt to enter them all the time. I generally leave all the crate doors open with a dog bed inside, and I always feed them in their crates, with or without the doors open, and they really love them. I never knew that dogs could love their crates so much. It wasn’t until I had a puppy chewing electrical cords when I was asleep and I couldn’t do anything to stop him that I turned to crates. The motivator for me was when I smelled smoke in my room and decided it was more humane to crate train him than to turn him in to the dog pound or let him burn us all up.

The one thing that might be technically wrong with my method is that I add the verbal cue first, before he’s learned the “wait” behavior. But at least it works!

Please note this article was originally published on 02/01/2006 and last reviewed on 05/07/2025. We regularly review our content to ensure that the principles and techniques remain valuable and relevant. However, best practices continue to evolve. If you notice anything that may need updating, please feel free to contact us at editor@clickertraining.com.