Is a Puppy Pen Necessary? 7 Reasons to Get One (+Setup Tips)
Before you bring home your cute bundle of fun, it is an excellent idea to equip your home to introduce your puppy to family life.
A puppy playpen is both a safety zone and a training aid for you and your puppy.
Why is a Puppy Playpen Necessary?
A puppy playpen provides a secure place to leave your puppy inside and outside your home, confident that nothing can harm your precious pup inside the controlled space.
Why Your Puppy Needs a Safe Zone
Initially, you will ensure that your young puppy always has company, but your life will involve leaving your puppy alone.
The safe zone provided by a puppy playpen is helpful for:
- Keeping your puppy from damaging itself and your furnishings when you are out of the house.
- Keeping your puppy safe outdoors – especially if you have a garden that offers escape, danger, and excess space.
- Freeing your time to work from home, perform household chores, or do other activities.
- Keeping your puppy safe when you have visitors or tradespeople visiting your home.
- Providing quiet time for meals free from interference from other pets.
- Providing a relaxed space to hang out from the noise and confusion of other family members.
- Allowing your puppy to get up in the morning without the potential for harm.
Long-term confinement isn’t cruel if your puppy has enough space to play, access to water, and separate areas to sleep and potty.
Essential Training Tool
Your young pup has a lot to learn, including:
- Potty training.
- Ability to be by itself without anxiety or destructive behavior.
- Understanding the difference between acceptable chewing and property damage.
Your puppy pen is an essential tool in helping you to train your pup with minimal stress and anxiety on both sides.
Choosing a Puppy Playpen
Puppy playpens come in all styles and sizes.
A puppy playpen is a transition stage for your puppy to grow into an adult dog with the freedom of the house, but some adult dogs enjoy a safe place to hang out when they tire of boisterous family life.
If desirable, buy a playpen that can accommodate your adult dog in small, medium, or large depending on your dog breed.
You can get puppy playpens that attach to a dog crate for the seamless provision of a safe sleeping area with a safe play area.
Alternatively, you can invest in a portable puppy playpen that you can set up in different rooms, outside, and take with you for work or visiting friends.
The best puppy playpens have slats or mesh, allowing the puppy to observe the outside world to build life experience.
The height of the puppy playpen must match the potential jumping capacity of your pup. If you buy the playpen to suit the breed (or oversized), you won’t have jumping issues.
Setting Up a Puppy Playpen
Your puppy needs potty training to do its business outside of your house or in a designated area.
While your puppy is learning essential puppy skills, you need to either set the puppy playpen in an easy-to-clean area or cover the floor of the puppy playpen with a disposable or easy-clean surface.
Position your puppy playpen so your curious pup cannot access or chew any item that you don’t intend for that purpose.
Puppies are adept at finding inappropriate things to chew, so look at any space with a puppy viewpoint. If your pup can reach it, it probably will chew it.
Inside the playpen, your pup needs a comfortable place to sleep, access to water, a play area with appropriate and exciting toys, and a suitable potty spot with a training pad.
Getting Your Puppy to Love Its Playpen
Even if it is for their own good, locking people up tends to cause stress and anxiety. The same applies to puppies coming into your home and then into a cage.
It is essential that your puppy sees the puppy playpen as a fun and relaxing place to hang out when you are not around to entertain it.
You can start this process by always allowing the pup free access inside and outside the playpen unless you are actively training your pup to accept confinement.
An excellent way to encourage puppy playpen acceptance is to have the puppy’s bed permanently inside the playpen and deliver all meals inside that space.
Several times a day, practice a minute or so of confinement while you stay in the room talking and playing. Work up to longer times and times when you leave the room for a minute or two.
Provided you don’t make a fuss about entering and exiting the puppy playpen, your puppy will accept the playpen (locked or unlocked) as standard and nothing to worry about.
Top Tips for Puppy Playpen Success
If you want your puppy to accept time in the playpen as part of its life, it is best if:
- You exercise the puppy with a game or walk before putting it in the playpen – tired puppies are relaxed puppies.
- You provide a high-value toy – like a puzzle-treat toy for rewarding play inside the playpen.
- You reward quiet behavior and not noisy barking or whining.
- You don’t make a fuss about the playpen entrance and exit.
- You don’t use the puppy playpen as a punishment for bad behavior.
- Keep confinement short and work up to more extended periods in stages.
- Alternate between being inside the room and outside of the room during confinement.
Your puppy playpen gives you the confidence you can leave your puppy alone, but you don’t want it to be unhappy.
If your puppy barks, whines, or cries when you leave the room, then be persistent – wait for the puppy to be quiet for ten seconds before going back and rewarding the puppy for being calm.
You can help promote a calm atmosphere for your puppy in the playpen using calming scents and soft music or puppy-friendly soundtracks.
Keep an Eye on Your Pup
Modern technology is fabulous, and some handy gadgets allow you to reassure yourself that your pup is fine when confined to the puppy playpen.
You can set up a video link to your mobile phone and use a remote treat dispenser to reward your pup for good behavior.
A spill-proof water bowl or a no-drip water dispenser gives your puppy reliable hydration without the mess, and the best puzzle toys stimulate your puppy’s need to chew and solve problems.
If you are giving your puppy some outdoor playpen time, ensure that your pup has access to shade and isn’t in full sun.
When outside, you need to keep your puppy in view because the outside world is full of potential hazards from other animals and the weather.
Conclusion
Your puppy playpen is an essential tool to provide your puppy with a safe place to play and help it deal with separation anxiety.
If you introduce your puppy to the playpen in a calm and relaxed way, your puppy will see the puppy playpen as its territory and willingly choose to spend time voluntarily inside the pen.
A puppy playpen gives you and the puppy security and peace of mind when you need to leave your puppy alone in your home.