The decision was made, the deposit was in the mail. I had two months to read all that I could about raising a puppy and training a dog before she arrived. It wasn't that I had never owned a dog before. It was just that my last two dogs had lived well into their teens and it had been a long time since there had been a puppy around the house. Hundreds of pages later there were several new (at least to me) ideas and techniques I couldn't wait to try. Crate training for a start.

In my childhood, our dogs slept in their bed in the breeze-way by the kitchen door. As years passed, my dogs slept in their dog house on the deck, again outside the kitchen door. And then there was my sweet Charlie, who in his last years slept in the kitchen next to my bedroom door. A dog sleeping in the bedroom? Never! Particularly a puppy. It would wet on the rug, chew on the furniture and try to get up on the bed. Out of the question.

But the more reading I did the more I became convinced that allowing a puppy to sleep in the bedroom in a crate was something I should try. After all the dog is a social animal and as such needs to be with it's "pack". With it's "pack" away at the office most of the day many dogs suffer from social isolation. One study of dog behavior found that 80% of problem dogs slept outside the bedroom. Sleeping in the bedroom would provide extended contact between owner and dog without demanding anything from either. At least I'd think about it.

But a crate - how cruel! To lock a dog up like that for hours at a time! Yet a crate was similar to a den and the dogs of long ago sought out dens in which to sleep and raise their young. And they said it made housetraining a lot easier. Maybe I'd give it a try after all.

Katie was just seven weeks old when she joined our family, tired out from the 4 hour drive home from the breeder's. We had tried carrying her home in the car in our laps but the moving landscape outside the windows caused her to panic and scream. The minute we placed her in the crate we had in the car she settled down happily, safe and secure in her own private den.

She wasn't quite as pleased with the crate those first few nights at home though. The breeder had provided a towel for us to take home, fragrant with the scent of her mother and littermates. We placed the towel in the crate and the crate next to my side of the bed. But Katie showed from the beginning that she had a mind of her own. It took her more than a month before she would be quiet at bedtime. More than a month passed before she came to accept that her place was on the bed in the crate and not on the floor next to mine. (In contrast, when we got Andy he settled down after fussing only five minutes the first night, with nary a peep thereafter.)

It wasn't that she wouldn't enter the crate. With a small piece of dried liver as an incentive she would go right in and lay down. It was after the lights went out that the trouble started. I began to think I was never going to get a full night's sleep. It's hard to believe that years later she raced to the crate each night, impatient if we were a few minutes late. And she was not in any hurry to get up and out of the crate in the morning either. She preferred to exit in her own good time, sleeping in even with the door open so she could come out.

OK, so much for using the crate at night. No wet spots on the rug, no chewed up bedding or frayed electrical cords. But what about during the day? I took a few days off work when Katie first arrived and charted her natural daily routine. Eat, play, sleep, eat, play, sleep. She was remarkably constant, her naps almost always two hours long and always taken "next to or under something" (as in a den). So instead of a nap by the couch, how about one in the crate? That way I could relax instead of being constantly on the alert for all the damage those little teeth and big paws were capable of doing (not to mention the wet spots on the carpet).

Well, as usual, Katie had a mind of her own. Why should she sleep in a crate when she could sleep on the rug and get in a quick chew or two when I wasn't looking? Again, for weeks she would shriek when left in the crate. Again, getting her to enter the crate wasn't the problem. It was when she realized she had to stay in the crate that the trouble began. And she didn't quiet down within a minute or two. Her protests continued on and on until I didn't think they would ever stop.

I tried everthing. Keeping her in the crate in the room with us, putting her in the crate in a room by herself. Music, white noise, lights, darkness. Slowly I came to realize she did best when left alone with soft music and muted lighting. The stimulation of having us in the room with her was just too much for her to handle. (In contrast, all the other dogs prefer to have their crates where the action is.)

It's hard to believe that Katie eventually learned to love to nap in her crate. When she was about a year old and much of her puppy destructiveness was behind her I decided that she might prefer to be free in the yard to chase the squirrels (her favorite thing) while I was at work. It soon became obvious that Katie preferred the crate. (I only worked part time so she was never crated for more than 4 hours.) Before work in the morning when my back was turned she would dash to her crate and resist if I tried to put her outside. Ultimately it was Katie's decision to use the crate during the day and I came to respect her choice.