Housing Your Puppy for the First Year

While this sounds simple at first glance, thinking through this deeper, it's not as easy as it seems. For one, no site seems to tell you exactly how much space to give your dog so that you're neither being cruel to the pet, nor giving it the equivalent of a playboy mansion when you take it home. For another, a recent search showed that many sites favoured crate training, and demonstrated how to pick the right size for a crate, but not the puppy's play area/territory.

I came up with an easy rule of thumb that worked for me.

• Imagine a rectangle area, simple length (L) x width (W) on the ground.
• Find out the length of your puppy as an adult dog. Look up websites or ask the breeder if you're not sure how large typical dogs of the breed grow to.  For mixed breeds, assume the larger of the mix until you can be sure. (Editor's note that typically, websites tend to tell you the height of the dog, and not the length. I'm no da Vinci but I reckon that a dog can't be more than 3 times longer than it is tall, so went with the proportions of height multiplied by 3.)
• L = length of your adult dog multiplied by 3, and W = length of your adult dog multiplied by 2.
• For most people with a medium sized dog, this would be the space of a large bathroom or a small kitchen.

The first impression you may have is that this space isn't all that big. You're right, but this isn't going to be the place that your dog gets free run of in the house for the rest of it's life - that would be cruel. This is the place where your puppy will spend any unsupervised time, and should therefore (by calculations above) be large enough to hold a bed, water and food bowls, toilet facilities and toys.

Once the decision is made, ensure that you have easy access to it, and that it's puppy proof (nothing chewable, toxic, dangerous, sharp, swallowable and otherwise unsuitable for a young dog). Also, if possible, ensure that puppy is able to walk into it by himself, rather than you needing to carry him into it all the time (helps tons with training later on). Finally, make sure puppy doesn't get the ability to wander from this designated zone once he's in it. This is where puppy pens, baby gates and other makeshift fencing that makes your house look like a miniature version of the Israeli-Palestinian border come in. Stick with it though, this will be puppy's home for the next few months until he's old enough to be trusted on his own around the house (usually when he's 8 months to 1 year old).

One thing I didn't mention was physical height. Assume puppy's going to jump, at least at the onset, and have Height = Length of adult dog. This is to account for dogs leaning on gate while standing on hind legs, jumping dogs, dogs that take a flying leap etc etc. I'm fortunate for my Westies that a baby gate that came up to the height of my waist sufficed, but then again, Westies don't grow that tall. This is another reason why it makes sense to have an arrangement where the puppy can walk in by himself. Suddenly picking up 8 month old German Shepherd isn't quite so easy anymore...