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Getting Ready to FLY! Airline Crate Training Tips!
????At our HoundTable event yesterday, @MiniD21 Theresa asked for some help getting her little mini Dachshund comfortable with going into a much smaller crate that will need to roll and experience the plane flight. She lives too far from the airport to work in that environment and her dog is a little timid around noises and movement, so she needs a plan with small steps.
????Watch the video and then share your ideas for Theresa. Later, I’ll follow up with some of the brainstorming we did during the HoundTable event – there were a lot of great ideas generated!
❓What do you think will help Theresa with her dog?
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1 Reply
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Interesting question, how to help a dog generalize her comfort in a larger metal crate with a smaller cloth crate, which is on wheels, and she will be flying in for the first time since she was a puppy.
Maybe taking the challenge apart and working on each part to build a strong whole?
What are the pieces you see?
Being able to easily settle on a specific (and easily moved) spot is the first one I thought of, which made me think of mat-work/stationing.
I am a HUGE fan of mat-work, where a dog learns to go to and then relax on a mat. When the dog gets the knack, their mat itself becomes a cue to chill out. The trick of it (how the magic happens) is shaping the behavior, and building it at the dog’s pace, creating a very strong history of reinforcement. I teach it as “Sticky Mat” because the dogs do seem to start sticking to the mat, drawn onto it as if from some sort of gravitational pull!
I get asked if dogs generalize this attraction to other mats. The answer is YES, as I can personally attest to by the frequency of finding my own muttley crew lounging on door mats.
Then there is a motion and the noise. How might others go about helping the dog get used to those? What’s worked well for your dogs?
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