renaultf1 … thanks for the reply, however I guess I failed to mention a few things...

1. The dog sleeps with us at night and that works fine, I don't want to crate him more than the 9 hours he already is.

2. Regarding crate size, the small one we are stopping using starting tomorrow... is barely big enough for him to turn around in and he has no issue crapping all over it and flinging it out and getting it all over his feet and making a huge mess. He honestly just doesn't care. I came home Friday night and he was even LAYING IN IT!!!!!!!!!!!!

3. I don't want to do the litter box thing because I want to get him to NOT GO while he is in his crate, not to think other things in the house that remind him of the litter box are ok to go on.

4. He rarely ever pees in his crate... maybe once a week. That really isn't even the issue. He poops because when he screams his butt muscles go through the pooping motion and it causes him to evacuate everything he has, which is always surprising as we ALWAYS make sure he poops before going into his crate. sigh

5. The linoleum is an AWESOME idea.

6. Paper towels work with 409, it just sucks doing it every day for 20 minutes (or MORE) and I was hoping to not have to do that anymore.

7. He does not care one tiny bit what is in the crate with him. I even gave him a piece of BACON one time and he would not eat it. I cam home to find it mashed into the poop just like he does with every other toy. He is absolutely possessed in his crate and will not behave rationally or normal at all.

This is all so disappointing because we love him to pieces while we are here, we are just both getting so sick of the mess every time we come home :((

I sure do hope he gets better!

Ok, so here I am almost 2 months later, we still need help with this.

Darwin is 99% a great, perfect dog…

Except the crate... so here is where we are at:

He sleeps in the bed with me and my fiance. She wakes up at 6:00 and takes him out to pee. He eats a little bit of food (no more than maybe 1/8th a cup) and plays a few minutes. Then she takes him back out after showering and he poops. He comes back to bed and sleeps with me for an hour. I take him out to pee again before I go to work and he goes most of the time.

So then at about 7:45am he goes into the crate. All last week we used the small crate with 2 locks on it inside the big crate with that latched as well, because he learned how to open the latch AND BOTH SNAP LOCKS on the small crate. This week he will now be back in just the big crate with both latches and both locks. I feel he is now old enough to handle the big crate again.

However as soon as I leave, he will freak out and poop in his crate. I know he does it right after I leave. The last couple weeks he actually only does this a few times (2 or 3) a week so I am starting to think maybe it will get better. However if we need to leave the house at all on the weekend or at night (even if only for 30 minutes) he will crap all over and make a huge mess even if he just went out.

This is getting very old and is so disgusting.

On a side note this week he has now been fully sexually erect when I get home from work 3 times!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No idea what to make of that yet, but he certainly will be getting fixed in the 5 to 6 month range and not waiting a year!

Any advice?

We have tried towels, rugs, newspaper, everything in the crate...he destroys and POOPS on all of it. And before anyone suggests putting nothing in the crate, we tried that a few times, he then never lays down and just shreds it to pieces with his nails and that is by far the worst kind of mess. The dust can be 2 to 3 feet around the crate in all directions and is very hard to clean up off his nails and the crate.

So 2 things I want...

1. Him to not poop in his crate 90% of the time.
2. It not to be a 3 hour cleanup project when he does.

Anyone got any bright ideas I have yet to try?

kiroja,

Thank you for the reply. Being that we just switched him to a smaller crate, I am a bit hesitant to go to a 3rd crate right away as he already is showing signs that he willingly doesn't mind being in the smaller wire crate, which he never did with the somewhat larger one.

As far as the x-pen with a top goes, I am going to look into that, I might go that route, thank you for that.

We actually picked him up 4 days before we were supposed to (8 weeks) but it worked out much better for both the breeder and us … long story. But I think he is mostly over the separation already, that seemed to just really be an issue the first couple days.

Thanks for the input on leaving the crate blanketless, he might get that as a trial run on Monday.

I sure do wish I could come home everyday at lunch to let him out, but I just can't ... and there is nobody else I can trust to do it.

I am going to adjust his food a bit so that the morning portion is much smaller and the evening portion is larger, hopefully that will indeed help a bit.

And yes, we have tons of patience, I just don't want to find out that we could have done something a better way after it is too late, ya know?

I live in SW Michigan, about 10 miles SW of Grand Rapids.

Thanks,

Nick

Thanks for all your comments, I now feel better about letting Darwin sleep with us!

How young is too young to train with classes? Thinking about doing this for our little Basenji.

And there can't be an age limit, I am still trying to train my faince' on a few things and she is almost 30!

We have really good luck with our little 9 week old at night now (wish I could say that about daytime)…

He falls asleep on one of our laps typically around 9:30pm (usually my fiance' is watching tv) and then we wake him back up once he is good and asleep and WARM, and take him outside to pee, this way he does it very fast and wants to go back to sleep, so then we put him in his dog bed. After he is asleep we move the whole dog bed into his small crate in our bedroom.

Mind you we won't use the crate once we can TRUST HIM. Our bedroom has brand new carpet and new paint and all new very expensive furniture (basically we did that right before we decided to get a Basenji :P)

So then if he wakes up and whines, I get up and rush right to him and immediately take him outside on the leash, he goes immediately, then I give him half a treat and he lays next to me on the bed to fall asleep (he will NOT go back to sleep if I put him in the crate and my fiance' can't handle the screaming (she needs her sleep as she commutes a LONG drive every day)) so then if he falls asleep before I do, I move him back to the crate.

Obviously the downfall to this is that sometimes I fall asleep first and then he gets to sleep in my bed... but he always wakes me up if he has to go (I keep my arm around him).

But we started this method about a week and a half ago and only had an incident in our bed the first night, since then its been better and better every night!

Now he only has to get up one time per night, which is usually around 3:30am now, it used to be 2, then 2:30, etc... so he is getting better.

However I have learned to give up on the idea of getting him to fall back asleep after my fiance' gets up for work, he will just fight me the whole time.

I sure wish I had the ability to be home all day to not have to crate my dog, but it is not an option, people have to work. So a lot of dogs will have to be crated for long periods of time. Hopefully eventually they get used to it. :)

Well, yes thanks for the info on the feeding, I agree with that.

Regarding going after feeding, he usually goes in the morning, and then again after feeding and then he will do it in his crate like 15 minutes after I leave (even if he just pooped 30 minutes earlier!)

But yeah, I came home during lunch the first week so that he could be let out at 4 hours and by the end of the week he almost was making it, but unfortunately I can't do that anymore. So while I know he might continue to do this for another month or so, I am just looking for any tips on minimizing it.

Newspaper scares me as the breeder taught them to go on it. So if I put that in the crate, it is like encouraging it. Plus then he will still go crazy and mash it all with his paws and get it all over all the bars of the crate and fling it out against the walls :(

I love my little basenji, but this part is the hardest!

Thank you for the reply though! :)

I just wanted to add that my Basenji jumped a 3 foot high solid plywood wall from standing still at 7 weeks old!

So yeah, a 3 foot climbable fence seems almost silly to me.

As soon as the snow melts we are getting a solid 6 foot high vinyl fence and putting that in.

Thanks for the reply dash…

Once daily might work, I just feel bad for him as I know I wouldn't want to eat that way!

Can't switch to an x-pen. I built a solid plywood box 36 inches tall about twice the size of his crate so he could eliminate there (a setup like what the breeder had) but he jumped out of it the very first day! He cleared the 3 foot high wall at 7 weeks! So I can't imagine how tall of a system I would have to have for him now. I am very hesitant about encouraging him to eliminate in a setup like that though because then he thinks he can go other places in the house that are "similar" like if we leave a towel on the floor in the bathroom.

I'm tempted to leave no blanket at all in his crate until he behaves better but again that seems cruel.

How do we determine the proper amount of food and time to feed our Basenji?

Darwin just turned 9 weeks old on Tuesday so he is still very young. Our breeder gave us some information that stated we should feed him 1/3 to 1/2 cup 2 to 3 times a day. I can not believe that I am reading on this forum that some of you only feed your dog once a day! Our little guy eats like a PIG in the morning and when I get home from work.

I have been doing the 1/3rd cup trying not to give him too much but he still poops in his crate everyday while I am at work.

Now I have figured out that the first poop happens just a short period (maybe 15 minutes) after I leave. I have even gone so far as to trick him, coat and shoes on and say goodbye and wait out in the hallway until he starts circling his crate to poop and then go in and take him outside and let him do it there and praise him tons and give him a treat and put him back in his crate.

But the problem is even with doing that it seems that at least once during the day he will wake up from sleeping (I have a webcam setup that I can watch him from work as I am trying to learn his habits) and freak out and eventually poop.

I am sure all of this is due to him being nervous…

We bought him a smaller crate and he is better in it because he can't jump (the other one was too tall even with the divider in it).

His new trick this last week is to dig like crazy in the crate and shred whatever kind of blanket we put in the crate... which sucks, it makes a huge mess with all the pooping (which he ALWAYS pushes out of his crate)

So...

1. How do I get him not to poop in his crate?
2. What should I use in the crate? I want it to be comfortable but I don't want it to need replacing every other day! (and to be washed daily!!!)

Thanks :)