I've been reading all of the conversations going on here since my husband and I got our rat terrier, so I thought it was about time I introduce myself. Our pup's name is Baxter, he's about 4 months old and he's a rat terrier mix. We got him from a family who had several puppies, but I don't think they were really what you would call "breeders". I think their dog just had puppies. Anyhow, we've been working on crate training, house training, and still trying to fit in fun time with the guy. The crate training was a huge challenge at first, although he is doing much much better now. The house training has also come leaps and bounds (which I'm sure is tied to the crate training). My husband and I work opposite shifts for now, so someone is almost always home with Baxter. I do have a couple of questions, though...

We're getting to the point where he is out of his crate much more often now, but is it ok to keep him in his crate when we can't be watching him directly? When we first got him (about 3 weeks ago now) he'd go to the bathroom in the house the first chance he got when we weren't looking so we had to increase his time in the kennel. Now he spends probably half of his time during the day in it, which I think is a great improvement. My goal is that as he becomes more accustomed to going to the bathroom outside and not inside, the more time he has outside of his crate with us and the less direct supervision he needs. Good??

My only other question for now is about exercise. It seems that this guy never wears out!! So we've been walking with him quite a bit. I usually do about 45 minutes every day with him and my husband jogs with him probably 3 times a week for about 10-15 minutes. I've read that too much exercise can be bad for puppies. Are we pushing Baxter too much? I just know that a lot of times bad behavior stems from a lack of exercise so i'm trying to avoid that.

Ok I lied -- one more question. I've been reading in your posts that rat terriers are very intelligent, so I'm trying to challenge him mentally more often. I've been trying to train him to sit and stay with hand signals, but after about 5 minutes or so he seems to lose interest. Am I doing too long of sessions, is it because he's still a puppy, or is my furbaby not as smart as the rest of ya'lls? haha.

Thank you guys for your input. This board has been a great encouragement for me that his training wil eventually progress!!