Puppy Apartment: A place for learning

The purpose of a puppy apartment is to create a safe place for the puppy to learn the rules of the house. The puppy apartment supports potty training, legal chew toy training, playtime, sleeping and more. Learn why we set up a puppy apartment and how to set one up yourself in this article.

Puppy apartments are a great tool for teaching your new puppy the rules of the house and providing them with a safe, designated space to train, play and sleep. These spaces can be especially helpful for those living in apartments.

Puppy apartments are essentially small, enclosed spaces within your home where your puppy can stay while you are not actively engaging with them. These spaces should be comfortable and secure, with plenty of room for your puppy to move around and play. Many puppy apartments also include a designated area for your puppy to go to the bathroom (see Should You Teach Your Puppy to Pee Inside?).

To create a puppy apartment, you can use a crate, a wire pen, a small room, or a designated corner of a larger room. Just be sure to block off any areas that you do not want your puppy to have access to. You can also use baby gates and use existing doors and walls to section off a portion of your home.

In addition to providing a safe and secure space for your puppy to stay while you are away, a puppy apartment can also be a great tool for training your puppy. Many puppies will naturally try to avoid going to the bathroom in their designated sleeping area, so using a puppy apartment can help teach them to hold their bladder until they are taken outside (your mileage may vary). Puppy apartments also support many other goals of early training like Legal Chew Toys.

Overall, puppy apartments can be a great way to teach your puppy the rules of the house and provide them with a safe, designated space to train. Designing and setting up the space will be different for each home.

Our Puppy Apartment Setup

Because we intended to do crate training, our puppy apartment consisted of a full-sized crate (with a divider) and a pen that was attached to the crate. This design allowed us to use the space of the pen for playtime and training. When Tuna was teething and starting biting or being out of control, we would leave the pen. When it was time for mealtime or nighttime sleep, we would close the gate to the crate. So this design gave us everything we needed for crate training, with all the benefits of the pen as well.

In a New York apartment, where did we find the space? Well, a crate and a pen are about the same size as a 4-person dining table and chairs. So we moved/stored the dining set. We weren’t hosting dinners anyways with a puppy and all guests during this time weren’t there to see us; they went straight into the puppy apartment for puppy kisses. It did give us a huge incentive to succeed in training. The sooner Tuna could be trusted in the home the sooner we could have our dinner table back.

Potty Training with a Puppy Apartment

Potty training is easier with a puppy apartment. Not only do you have confinement and supervision, but the space is also designed to be easily cleaned with supplies at the ready. Accidents are going to happen with potty training, so minimizing the damage and emotional toll to clean them up is helpful. The comedic scene of a puppy who has just soiled the floor stepping in their mess and trotting it around the home while you chase after them is completely avoided by ensuring the accidents happen in the puppy apartment.

Where to Get a Puppy Apartment

As you gain confidence and your puppy learns the rules of the home, they will spend less time in the puppy apartment. That means that some or all of the puppy apartment will be temporary. This may be due simply to the size of the dog over time or that a pen or crate or designated space is not part of your long-term plan. If you have community support, items like a crate or a pen are great to source used. We leveraged our neighborhood’s Buy Nothing group when we moved on from our pen.