I totally agree with Shanna.

In my experience they’ll bark to let you know someone is there…

then run over to them and lick them to death with excitement and affection.

I have an 11 week old labrador/greyhound puppy who has a few issues we hope to solve with crate training, but as i am new to this concept, I would like to ask a little advice.

Firstly, I am struggling to find some good info on toilet training with a crate. My vet advised to have some puppy pads in the crate overnight with the pup as well as food and water but alot of the websites i have read advise against this. What is the best method?

We are mainly trying this due to some bad chewing behaviour. I know she is only young and it is in her nature to chew, but she has pulled a significant amount of wall paper off the wall so i am a little concerned about that. Obviously wall paper is not a recommended diet for a pup so i worry about her swallowing some, hence one more reason for the crate.

As far as biting goes, she jumps up and snaps at our hands alot. She has a tendency to crouch down with her back end in the air and growl, she will then bark and lunge up to bite. A friend insists this is her challenging authority so i would like to hear thoughts on controlling this behaviour.

She is a lovely dog and some of her training is going well, she just has some destructive tendencies that i would like some constructive advice on correcting please.

Thanks for helping
Just a quick side note, i don’t work at the moment but do try to leave her alone for a little while every day to hopefully help with separation problems.

The whole point of crate training for house breaking purposes is that teh dog does NOT eliminate in the crate. At 11 weeks she can’t hold it for a whole working day. We set up an ex pen in our kitchen and expect to clean up messes until about 6 months old. During this time we crate at night to keep the pup out of trouble while we sleep. The pup’s crate is in our room so it wakes us up when it has to go potty. Once the pup is about 6 months old (more or less depending on the pup) we start to crate while we are at work and allow freedom of our room only at night.

The biting is play biting. Step away from her and tell her "no" but make sure you are playing with her in other ways. Pups need that socialization piece. the play biting usually stops once they get intheir adult teeth. The jumping up part will end with some basic obedience training.