About Crates and Collars

I learned my lesson about crates and collars today. Never. And I mean NEVER leave a puppy untended in a crate wearing a collar. Yes, I knew that it wasn't advised. I knew that there was the possibility that the collar could get caught in the crate and maybe cause the pup to panic. Yes, I almost always took off his collar before crating him in order to avoid this. Unfortunately, I never took it too seriously.

This evening, Novel was playing (very nicely, I might add) in my bedroom while I cleaned up a bit and got things ready for work in the morning. Suddenly, I realized that I really needed to wash clothes before I left in the morning. Now, the laundry room is as far on the other side of our house from my bedroom as it could possibly be, and, although our house is by no means large, I figured that it would be easier to simply kennel Novel for a few minutes rather than to try to bring him with me through the whole house. After all, it would only be a few minutes.

I told him to "Kennel" and he happily trotted in, after which I latched the kennel door. To be honest, I didn't even think about removing his collar. After all, I would only step out of the room for a few minutes, and besides, my sister was upstairs. She could hear him if she needed to.

I had just started to load the washer when I heard high pitched yelping from upstairs. I called upstairs to find out if everything was ok, my sister spoke to Novel, and the crying stopped. I figured that he probably suddenly had to go to the bathroom, since he had just been playing and had drunk water recently. I hurried and finished the clothes and went upstairs to take Novel to the bathroom. As I mounted the stairs, I heard more yelping.

I got to Novel's kennel to find him sitting quietly, but hunched over and honestly looking quite miserable. Yep, I figured. He's gotta go bad.

Not so. When I opened the kennel door, I saw that one paw was picked up of the floor and his head was being pulled down by the collar. Poor Novel had somehow caught his front dewclaw on his bunch of tags and could not remove it. I immediately fixed it for him, and we had an apologetic snuggle session.

I am extremely grateful for several things because this situation could have turned out a lot worse. First of all, I am so very glad that this happened while I was in hearing distance and only a few seconds away, rather than at a time when I was gone. He would have been in big trouble if he had been stuck like that for more than a few seconds. Secondly, I am so proud of Novel for not totally freaking out! He calmed right down when told to and waited patiently for help. The way his dewclaw was caught, if he had panicked, I believe he would most likely have torn it off completely and we would be at the emergency vet right now. Thank goodness for calm puppies and lessons learned!