 I have the same situation!
Hi!
Our Mariah is now 15 wks old and we have the same situation as you.
We originally kept our Mariah in our huge bathroom but the pee-pad training just wasn't working. She would go on the pads but also all over in the bathroom.
We decided to put an x-pen in the bathroom. It is about 2x6 and she has her pee-pads on one end, and on the other end we have her food/water, crate and bed. She has consistently gone only on the pee-pads since we did this. Not ONE accident in her x-pen.
This is the BEST advice we have gotten from this site and it has worked so very well for us!
When we get home we take her out of the x-pen and closely supervise her. (If there is a time when I can't closely supervise she goes back into the pen.) I always immediately change her pad first thing (so I can see fresh potty). After about 15 min after we first take her out of the pen (since we don't know when she last went potty) we walk her back to the x-pen and tell her to "go potty". I just sit on the floor next to the pen until she goes. I have a treat and lots of praise immediately ready for her when she goes. Then we let her out again. From that point on every 30-45 min we would repeat that process.
She VERY QUICKLY learned to go potty at these times. We are now taking her every 60 minutes and RARELY have any accidents.
We now coax her to go in the pen by herself and she goes pee on the pad every single time and then we praise and give a treat! It's been working really well!
Once she even went into the pen by herself and went potty...YEAH!
We are training with pee-pads because we are gone for such a long time during the day at school/work and also because our WI weather has been really harsh this winter.
When the weather gets nicer we plan to take her outside. We will use bell-training (hang a bell on the door and teach them to ring it when they want to go outside). We will use the same process as above - only instead of coaxing her to go into her pen we will take her outside.
I hope this helps! Good Luck! |