Hello everyone, I was wondering if anyone had come up with a creative solution to this:
We have a just over one-year-old lhasa/poodle mix. She is crate trained and indoor pee-pad trained and does very well overall. I typically let her out to pee before we go to bed at 10-11 at night and again in the morning between 8 and 9am. However, at night she typically pees in her crate at least once (I'm guessing). Which in the morning leaves a cleanup of the crate as well as a soaked dog.
So, to avoid a cleanup every morning we've tried putting a pee pad in the crate. Any time we do this she shreds the pee pad into a thousand pieces even though toys and bones are also in the crate with her. I've even tried the pee pads with sticky glue on the back to keep them stuck down and she manages to shred those as well.
My next attempt was to put an old towel in the crate and replace it every few days. This seemed to work great as far as mess was concerned (just throw the towels in the wash!) and I assumed that she was just chewing on the towels. Well the other day she threw up a 6 inch log of what must have been digested towel so obviously she is eating the towel as well. I think we were very lucky and agreed that we'd rather have a dirty dog than a dead dog. So now we're just back to an empty crate again.
So is the problem that we're not letting her out at night? I really don't want to have to wake up during the middle of the night to let her out. However, the same problem would occur if we need to be gone for hours during the day (say on the weekend). Has anyone come up with a good solution for keeping the crate clean that also won't kill my dog?
Thanks to everyone for any advice you can give.
We have a just over one-year-old lhasa/poodle mix. She is crate trained and indoor pee-pad trained and does very well overall. I typically let her out to pee before we go to bed at 10-11 at night and again in the morning between 8 and 9am. However, at night she typically pees in her crate at least once (I'm guessing). Which in the morning leaves a cleanup of the crate as well as a soaked dog.
So, to avoid a cleanup every morning we've tried putting a pee pad in the crate. Any time we do this she shreds the pee pad into a thousand pieces even though toys and bones are also in the crate with her. I've even tried the pee pads with sticky glue on the back to keep them stuck down and she manages to shred those as well.
My next attempt was to put an old towel in the crate and replace it every few days. This seemed to work great as far as mess was concerned (just throw the towels in the wash!) and I assumed that she was just chewing on the towels. Well the other day she threw up a 6 inch log of what must have been digested towel so obviously she is eating the towel as well. I think we were very lucky and agreed that we'd rather have a dirty dog than a dead dog. So now we're just back to an empty crate again.
So is the problem that we're not letting her out at night? I really don't want to have to wake up during the middle of the night to let her out. However, the same problem would occur if we need to be gone for hours during the day (say on the weekend). Has anyone come up with a good solution for keeping the crate clean that also won't kill my dog?
Thanks to everyone for any advice you can give.