Craging Question and a welcome to our new pup!

[ky_boxer]

First off I would like to welcome our new puppy Miles to this forum. He is 8 weeks old today and is defiently a live wire. He weights 8 lbs and is fawn colored. Miles also has a sister Maggie (another boxer) fawn colored and weights 56 lbs she is 11 months old. I will try to post some pictures soon so everyone can see them.
My question was that when miles gets bigger if i should crate him and maggie together or have seperate caging for them. Maggie, are 11 month old, is in her own cage when we are gone from the house and it is a large gorilla brand cage. miles as of now is in a small carrier cage to make sure there is no accidents and it is plenty big enough for now he can turn around stand all of that. I would buy the x-large cage for both of them to stay in its are dimensions 28" x 48" x 31" h. If keeping them in the same cage is a bad idea let me know and i will just get another one of the cages i have for maggie now for miles. it just seems tough for me to have them sitting side by side in seperate cages. i would appriciate your help thanks

 

[Dunkin]

I personaly think caging 2 together is a bad idea. Mine all 4 have their own crate even though at night Bojax and Maggie sleep in the same one with the door open. They are never locked in the same one. They are all lined up side by side so they talk and play together. I was always afraid they would get into a diagreement and no way for them to seperate.

 

[gmacleod]

Definitely separate crates - though side by side (even touching) is a very good idea.

Thing is though, every dog needs their own space. It would be fine for them to share a crate as long as the door is open. But they shouldn't be shut in together. Dogs solve their problems and disagreements in life by one or other dog backing down and backing off. Well, if you shut them in the same crate, you're removing that option. So - it's generally just a matter of time before there is a fight. And even then, nobody can back off - the option isn't available. And considering that 90% of crating with the door locked takes place when nobody is home - it's just not a good idea.

I wouldn't consider crating two dogs together unattended - except perhaps for two or more very young puppies. But once they're beyond the baby stage (or one of the animals in question isn't a baby anyway), then it's better to crate separately.

A second benefit is that it should help somewhat with increasing the independence of your baby pup (even if he's not overly impressed by the concept at the outset).