Rachel27

Thanks for all the tips! I'll start now and tell you how it goes!

Thanks again for all of your responses.

Absolutely NOT too late.

Hard to give you tips unless you let us know what they know, what you're trying/wanting to teach them and what troubles you are having. We don't know your dogs and haven't had the opportunity to see them.

Although one tip I guess I CAN give .... have you thought about joining a good dog school or taking on some one-on-one professional help?

Sorry- should have given more detail!

Nike (3 year old Mal) is an ex show dog, well trained, however, he is not really used to sleeping in the same spot for the whole night. We let the dogs in at night every so often, and sometimes I find a little pee surprise in the morning, but not all the time. He is a serial marker when we are not looking (as he would never do it in front of us!) ... But besides the toileting during the night, he is pretty good, however, used to sleeping outside and being free to roam around.

Chika (2 yr old female) is a little cheeky. She is good at sleeping inside though, sleeps in the same spot all night and doesn't need to go to the toilet until we wake up in the morning. However, I'm not too sure if she would be freaked out if I closed the zipper to her crate as she is not used to being enclosed like that.

I am really looking into crate training so that we are able to take the dogs away with us more easily, however, the initial reason for looking into this was for Chika in the car as she has all of a sudden decided to jump the back seats in our wagon and decided that she wants to sit in the front now!

I am looking for some tips to get Chika into her crate. I have tried putting treats in there and getting her to drop when she gets in and reward her with pats, but she comes straight out after that...

I have a 3 year old Malamute and 2 year old Sibe. What are your thoughts on trying to crate train at their age? Is it too late?

If it isn't too late, what are your tips for training older dogs?

Thanks in advance,

Rachel

I feed both our dogs Purina ProPlan performance formula with water. My dogs both love it. One of my dogs didn't really have much of an appetite before we started her on this, however, now she eats it all up. And as they are of the spitz breed, i give them two tins of sardines a week with their ProPlan.