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Any advice for New Mastiff Owner

TripleD

Member
:pray: Good Evening! Anticipating our new arrival tomorrow night into our pack. We currently have a 18 month old Chi and a 6 month old boxer/beagle mix. Both to which have been altered. The first worry I do have is the fact of leaving the puppy in his crate for longer than the "2" hour rule. If one was to have but no choice to allow the puppy to stay in his crate for say, 4 hours, what would be the best alternative? I had thought about fencing off our kitchen area, but would this teach them it was okay to use the kitchen floor? I will be using puppy pads. I've never had an issue in the past with dogs and potty training. Our 6 month old we adopted 2 months ago, and he has had only 2 accidents in house. From the get go, he has remained in his crate for at least 6 - 8 hours while we are working and have never had an issue. We have yet to leave him roam while we are not home. He's a bit more "adventurous" then my chi. My chi on occasion will go into his crate if I know we will be gone longer then 7 - 9 hours. Neither of them sleep in their crates, but sleep in bed with us. Of which, this didn't happen until they could hold it half way through the night. I just want make sure we do it the right way straight out of the gate. Duke is going to be one large dog and that's quite a bit of pee to clean!

Thanks!

:cool:
 

ruthcatrin

Well-Known Member
Depends on the dog. Some will handle 4hrs ok as long as you manage food and water appropriately, others struggle with it. Apollo, my Tibetan Mastiff, was asking to go out with in 24 hrs and was managing the 4hrs of crate time with in a week. Arty (not a mastiff) took forEVER to manage more than a couple hours. And since he shredded everything put in his crate we had to clean his crate daily for a while.
 

TripleD

Member
since he shredded everything put in his crate we had to clean his crate daily for a while.

We went to the pet store today and looked at crates. They told me I should start out with his Mature crate right away and obviously they don't carry the 54 inch crate that we will need. I have never put anything in my other dogs crate as in pee pads etc. I am hoping that it is not going to mess things up by him being in my Chi's crate for a few weeks while we wait for his to come in. We didn't realize they would have to go in their adult crate right away. :razzberry:
 

ruthcatrin

Well-Known Member
Well, thats one of those things that varies. Most of those big crates come with dividers so you CAN put the pup in them right away. We bought a slightly smaller crate for Apollo to start in and swapped it for the ginormous one when he started bonking his head on the roof. He wasn't entirely thrilled with the switch at first, but he took to it after a few days.

I'd have prefered to not put pee pads in Arty's crate, but didn't want to have to clean up pee.....didn't make a difference since he shredded them anyway.
 

DennasMom

Well-Known Member
Strange recommendation - never heard that one. You want to start out with a crate that's small enough not to have room for a 'bathroom' corner in addition to the 'sleeping' quarters. Unless you WANT them to pee in the crate. I would think that will make potty-training to outdoors harder, though.

We did start Denna out with an XL crate, and filled it with pillows to make it appear smaller. She still loves sleeping on pillows.

When she was ~10 weeks old I left her for just over 2 hours, and that was the only time she's ever pee'd in her crate. Otherwise, she's followed the thumb rules pretty well: puppies can hold it for 1 hour past the number of months in age... so at 2 months old, 3 hours is maximum. We never pushed it past that. She's good for at least 6 hours now. Her bladder might last longer, but her brain doesn't last even that long... at about the 3 hour mark she gets bored and normally decides to destroy something (i.e. the pillows in her crate). We have her in the 54" wire "condo" crate now when we're out, otherwise we come home to OUR bedding shredded. She's fine when we're home, and has run of the house then.

We have a dog walker that will stop by and let Denna out for potty-breaks and take her for walks when we're not here. That works well for us.