How many pads?

[Friley]

Ok,

First off, I apologize, my wife has named our yorkie Baloo the Bear, cause he looks like a little bear, and I thought it was going to be Friley. No big deal, but just so you don't get confused like me! I bought a 36" cage for him, and a little doggie cushion to sleep in, and everything fits pretty decent in there, just a little bit of open space between the food area/bed area/pee pad. Seems he's regressed a bit on the pee pad training, and he won't go pee or poop on it. So I have to start his paper training over again and I don't know how to do so.

Should we cover the entire cage floor in pee pads and just put the cushion on top and hope like heck he chooses to pee on the less plush paper? Or cover the whole floor in pee pads and nothing else? Or just leave the space he has now and the bed and 1 pee pad? He's sitting in the cage right now whining and trying to hold it, when we are telling him to go (nicely) and he won't. We're so frustrated, its hard to know if we are doing anything right cause we can't get him to go.

[sweetr72]

I would suggest you block off most of the cage so that he only has enough room to lay down and turn around. MOST of the time dogs will NOT sleep in their own "mess" thus holding it long enough to get to another place to go. Just do not leave him in there tooooooooo long or to the point where he has no other choice but to pee/poo in there. If you give him two seperate areas or a big enough space that he can sleep away from his mess than he will use that as his potty area. Try to let him out frequently and praise the heck out of him for going outside!!

Hope this helps!!

Dawn

[Oscar's Mummy]

I would just stick with one pee pad at one end of his pen and his bed, toys, water, etc. at the opposite end (not sure how big your pen is). If you start off lining his whole area with pads, then try to reduce it down to one pad, he may still go where the pads used to be because he remembers that 'spot' as a place to go. My dogs will go in the place where the pad WAS if I take it up and don't get a new one down fast enough - they just know that's where they go.

I'm not sure how well your dog responds to praise, but I found this worked really well with training my puppies to use the pads - neither one of them were really big eaters in the beginning so using treats as reward would have been useless. I think you said in your previous post that the puppy is 10 weeks old? How often do you put him in the pen? If you can pick up on the signs that he needs to go it will make training much easier (pacing, sniffing the floor, maybe whining, etc.). A puppy this young will need to go OFTEN (after playing, eating, sleeping) and when they gotta go, they gotta go! Immediatly after he wakes from a nap or after a good play, pick him up and physically place him on the pad and wait for him to pee - when he does, PRAISE PRAISE PRAISE. He should catch on really quickly. And remember - if you find a mess off the pad or anywhere in the house - don't scold him unless you SEE him doing it. If you CATCH him peeing, try clapping your hands once really loud to 'startle' him out of what he's doing and tell him NO - then pick him up and put him on the pad.

If your pen doesn't have a solid bottom and you're wanting to protect your floors, you could cut open a large garbage bag and lay it down on the floor to help protect it, then lay a pad on top. I purchased a large plastic kennel tray (I use an ex pen) that takes up about half of the pen and put that under the pad so that when Oscar 'misses' it doesn't end up on my floor (it also has a small lip edge on all four sides which is good too).

I'm sure you got lots of good advice in your other thread.. but I hope this helps some too. 10 weeks is still very young and as you've only had him a couple days, he may just be regressing because of the change in environment. He may very well go back to using the pads really well again.

Good luck with Baloo!

[Gracie2006]

Gracie is set up with an x-pen, with a crate inside of the pen. Her toys, food, water and pee pads are out in the pen. She only sleeps in the crate. I used a cheapo plastic shower curtain liner in the bottom of the x-pen to protect my carpet. I now close the door on the crate when I want Gracie to learn how to "hold it". She is nearly 100% using the pads. The only time she has had an accident within the last two weeks is when it was my own fault. Good luck!

[Lacy's Mom]

The best setup for a puppy, includes the sleeping den inside a gated pen. This way they sleep in the kennel and can exit to play, eat and potty, but are still contained within a specific area. He sees the kennel as his sleeping quarters and in an area that small he isn't going to be able to tell there is a difference and doesn't want to soil the den. When people tell you to get a small cage, they mean just for sleeping, they let the puppy out everytime it needs to go potty, you really don't want him peeing within the kennel area at all.

[Bnot]

After doing a lot of searching on this site, and asking questions I found I was doing a lot of things wrong myself, and have tried to correct them. So far, its working out pretty good.

The crate I bought Venus was way too big. I sectioned off the crate, to where she just had room to stand up, turn around and lay down. .

I made an x-pen, large enough for her crate, food outside the crate, and pe pad in another corner, outside the crate. Crate is used for sleeping only, no pee pads, and no food in it. I now leave the crate door open, so she can lay down when she wants to.

The first night, she played with the pee pad, laid on it, and everything else. But the next morning when I woke up, she'd used the pee pad for #1 and #2. So I am seeing a lot of progress here, and its only been like 3 days.

Good luck, and I'm sure others will have suggestions too. And hey, there are some smart folks here!