We had our baby girl in bed with us the first couple of months but then she got heavy and wanted to sleep on our feet. Then she would whine when we moved, so we had to put her back in her crate. It actually worked better than we thought. We put her in her crate next to our bed. The first two nights, we gave her some drops of rescue remedy on her tongue before bed. This kept her calm and aside from a couple of barks and whines of protest which we shushed her for, she went to sleep and slept all night. I've noticed that she doesn't wake up during the night if she is nice and warm, so I've put a feather pillow in her crate to sleep on which keeps her a lot warmer and cover her crate with a blanket to insulate it from the cold, since we have our bedroom window open at night.
We trained her to go on the pad since we didn't want to spend every half hour outside for 15 minutes. So we watched her, waited for her to start to squat and rushed her to the pad. Then we threw a party for her complete with treats, and kept that up until she got the idea that going potty on the pad = treats.
We are now training her to use the pad outside on our deck and are about 50% successful so far. She still goes poo on the carpet where her pad was about half the time, but if we watch for the signs (circling and sniffing) then we can get her out fast enough to her pad.
The next step, once she doesn't have to go as often is to get her to go in the yard. She already knows how to pee in the grass, but hasn't done poo there yet. |