Page 35 - Online Spring 2022 Newsletter

The Crate Debate - Fact and Fiction
Caged Dog Syndrome (Crate State/Kennelosis)
By Kit Wadmore-Smith
There is little that would disrupt a its third reading
quiet evening of drinks with dog in the House
owners as surely as bringing up the of Commons on
th
subject of 'dog crates'. Love them or the 14 March
hate them they’re an emotive topic, 2022.
on top of which we’re not being told It enshrines in
a true story about them. Here are a law that dogs
few lesser known facts and a short have the
exposé on some of the horrible effects capacity to
of using them incorrectly. experience feelings and sensations
and complements the work Profs.
Humans have successfully been
training dogs to live in their homes Coren and Berns did when they
for 30,000 years - without dog crates, showed that dogs have the same
that is until they showed up in the level of intelligence and sentience
1980s. Today the dog crate industry as a two and a half year old human
is worth around $50 billion so it's child; incidentally, the Kees rated
hardly surprising that we're all highly in the breed comparisons.
suddenly being encouraged to buy Knowing this then we can take an
one in order to train our dogs educated guess at how it might feel
‘properly’. This appeals to those of to your Keeshond to be crated.
us with busy lives not willing/able to Have you ever accidentally been
find the time for house training as trapped in a toilet? Most of us have
we’re told they make it easier and at one point or other and know that
quicker with puppies and we’re within a fraction of a second of
comforted to hear from 'experts' that fumbling with the lock and realising
dogs actually like to be caged anyway it’s not going to open, our pulse rises,
‘because they’re den animals’. our mouth desiccates and we can fall
into a cold sweat with intense panic
But wait. That is just not true; we
are being sold a lie. Dogs are not den at the realisation that we’re stuck in
animals. Extensive scientific studies the loo. It can turn a sane adult into
of feral dogs show that they actually a gibbering wreck quite irrespective
spend 95% of their time outside of the fact that we know there is
in the open and only use dens for clearly no real danger to our
whelping or when infirm. To add to personage at all but it can be so
this, crates are not dens. When traumatic that it creates a memory,
closed they are nothing more than or in some even a phobia, that can
stay with us for life.
very small, mostly wire, cages
designed for our convenience and of Knowing this, why can we be so easily
course to support a lucrative money persuaded that it’s okay to shut a
making industry. sentient creature like a dog into a
cage a fraction of the size of our
The Animal Welfare Sentience Bill was
introduced to formally recognise smallest ever toilets and leave him
animals as sentient beings and had there? Hopefully you wouldn’t dream
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