Start leaving room while he is in there for 2 minutes and onward, gradually. When you return, don’t make a fuss, just walk over and open crate. In 3 days he will be officially crate-trained, ready to be left alone for an hour, no longer at first. Leave him gradually longer, slowly and carefully.

Q. Why do I want a crate for my puppy? A. Because they love it is best reason. They feel very safe and secure in there. Here are some more:

When you leave a puppy alone, he always has some measure of separation anxiety. This leads him to any behavior that brings him comfort, which is chewing, digging, or when it is severe, voiding his bowels. When placed in a crate, he feels safe because nothing can get to him, nothing can harm him. He will sleep and chew and wait for you to return.

Crate training is first step in being able to leave him overnight at vet. Without it he will cry entire time, feeling lost and abandoned. With crate training, he is sure you will return, you always do. Of course vet’s office is strange and will cause him some anxiety, but nothing like pure terror he will feel without experience in being locked in.

NOTE: About crate-training, do not make a prison of his crate. Do not use it as punishment. Do not leave him there for more than 2 hours, just time for a long puppy nap and some chew time. After that he will cry. Do not remove him while he is crying. This will make him think he has to cry to get out. No matter what, make sure he is being good when you open door. He will learn he has to be quiet to get out.

Do not make a fuss when you are letting him out, just quietly open door and take him out to potty. When he potties, praise him to high heaven! Dogs naturally do not go where they nest, but sometimes it happens. Do not scold, just clean it out with a bland face. He will learn lesson. If possible, try to clean it while he is outside so he returns to a clean crate.

“If he got arrested, he might or might not get convicted. And if he got convicted, he’d get maybe six months in jail,” said Mamma. “And when he got out of jail, he’d come back to our neighborhood to live. And one night our barn would burn down. Or maybe our house. Or someone would shoot our cows or maybe even us. Something. So we leave that situation alone.”

Now that rest of country has discovered Montana and taken over a good chunk of it (the goodest chunk, in fact), people no longer think that way. The Bitterroot Valley has five times population it had in my childhood. The sheriff has deputies, and according to local newspaper they are busy day and night responding to complaints of barking dogs, domestic violence, and petty theft.

But, during that week in late sixties, we and Davises kept watch on shack and did what we had been taught to do: nothing. “Look!” said Daddy, as our car drove slowly by one night. We looked, and, sure enough, a dim, grey light shone through shack’s window, which window was pretty dirty now that Grandma no longer gave it her attention. “He’s lit kerosene lamp.”

“Must be reading in there,” said Mamma softly.

That week we locked doors of our house every night -- something we had never done before -- and Daddy slept with his pistol close at hand.

In case dog barked in middle of night.

So that was why we’d put up with all that barking all those years, I realized. That and our family’s soft hearts and, where some of those dogs were concerned, our soft heads as well.

“The Davises tell me they haven’t seen a light in that shack for three nights,” Daddy said a few days later. “I’m going up with my pistol and investigate.”

He went up at noonday, stood like a Western lawman with his back to one side of door, gun ready. He suddenly whirled to face shack and kicked door open.

Silence.

He went inside, gun still at ready. But shack was empty. Our fugitive had fugited, leaving behind only a couple of well worn detective magazines and a pile of cigarette butts. And an unmade bed. Sure proof he hadn’t been brought up right, you bet.

And, in case you wonder, Daddy didn’t take dog when he reconnoitered around shack that day. Daddy was pretty fond of that little dog, and he didn’t want him to get hurt.