pen or crate at night

[Cocos mummy]

hiya, not long till we pick up coco now (very excited ), just trying to work out how will 'do' night times. I know that most people get up in the night to let the pup toilet (and gwen bailey says you should) but we have decided to just go down the puppy pad/newspaper route and i'll go down at 6 to let her out....

anyways to my question, We are going to have a crate in a pen in the kitchen, what i'm wanting to know is shall i put her in the crate at night and shut the door (its a 28" one) and put a pad on one side bedding on the other. Or shall i leave the crate door open and just have a bedding in there and a pad in the pen? does that make sense?

Thanks, Beth

[Han]

IUasked the very same question about 4 weeks ago! We decided to have Darcey in her crate with the door open and paper in her pen. \This has worked for us although i'm sure the other way would work too.

She only has a 24" crate which is totally filled with bedding. This is mainly because hubby gets up at 5.30am for work so we just couldn't face having our sleep disturbed. Also because she spends time in the pen during the day when i'm out (up to 3 hours) and I wanted her to use the paper to toliet then. I know that toilet training will take longer though. We were very lucky because Darcey didn't wake us at all (apart from one night when she had a bad tummy). And after 5 nights she stopped pooing inside overnight. So now there is just wee on the paper when we get up and we need to take the plunge and start shutting her in her crate overnight.

[Cob-Web]

anyways to my question, We are going to have a crate in a pen in the kitchen, what i'm wanting to know is shall i put her in the crate at night and shut the door (its a 28" one) and put a pad on one side bedding on the other. Or shall i leave the crate door open and just have a bedding in there and a pad in the pen? does that make sense?

If you're not going to get up to her, then I would leave the crate door open so she can get to a separate area - some puppies will get very distressed at the prospect of soiling their bed, and some pups consider their whole crate their bed 

[LisaB]

I put Angels crate in her pen and leave the door open, now she's older.  When younger, I used the crate only as it aided toilet training. 
Ian Dunbar's book has some thoughts on it.  Can't remember them now and I've lent the book out to someone who has a new pup.  Maybe someone else will come along and clarify?

[Cocos mummy]

great thanks guys, i was thinking that was the best thing to do. I've got ian dunbars book (but also lent it to friend) need to get it back so i can re-cap!

[sabrino]

We had Milo in the crate with the door shut from day one. I got up and went down at 4.30am and let him out to do his business for the first two days and over a couple of weekes increased the time to about 7am. We never had any problems with him and unbelievably he only weed in his crate twice at night. However I put this down to him rather than us-I think it was just lucky-he has the baldder of an ox. I am sure my next pup will be a weeing/pooing machine!