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Originally Posted by Ladylavender  I will tell you what I did and it was quite successful. In the very beginning we left Millie in her crate, while we were at work, with the crate blocked off to only create enough space to have her lay down and turn around in. We did not leave food or water in the crate while we were at work. As a matter of fact, anytime she was in the crate, she did not have access to food or water. (Day or night) We did leave a Kong in there with treats inside the kong, but she really did not play with it much or eat from it.
We fed her breakfast, took her out for a morning walk (and yes, we had to re-organize our morning to accomodate this new routine) and put her in her crate. She was only 12 wks and she could hold her pee and poo until we got home and took her out for another walk. We would feed her her second meal and give her plenty of water until 7pm and we would put the water and food up for the rest of the evening.
The walk in the morning was important, because she would do her poo then as well as her pee, plus it got her tired out before having to put her in the crate to sleep all day. The walk in the evening (as soon as we got home, we didn't even have time to change clothes or shoes) was important, because she would pee 2 -3 times, immediately and also do her poo. This gave her an opportunity to exert some energy after being cooped up in the crate. Then in the house we would go for our evening routine.
During the evening, she would have to go pee every hour on the hour, even though she was able to hold the whole time we were at work.
At some point, after she became reliable in holding it and we spent some time establishing the x-pen as the same as being in the crate and the routine was down, we put the crate in the x-pen and a bed and toys for her to have more room to roam in while we were gone. Still no food or water. And she did fine. |
Thank you so much for sharing all that with us!
I'll be home with her for 10 days during my vacations.
After that she'll have to get into our schedule and we are also going to change ours schedule if we have to. Again thank you very much.