Kimber44, when she poops in the middle of the floor while playing, do you stop what you're doing to scold her and immediately take her outside? Treating her when she goes outside is only half the process. Now that she's not a tiny baby anymore, she needs the negative reinforcement to--treat when I go where I'm supposed to, mad mommy when I go where I'm not supposed to! Taking her out immediately shows her where she should have done that. I don't do outside training, but when mine pottied off her piddle pad, she got scolded (No, ma'am, Bad, bad dog! The is where we potty...) and put on her pad. And I'd make her stay there for a few minutes. She'd lay down on it, but I made her stay there so she'd know I was serious. To be honest, that didn't work super-well for me. I had to resort to putting her nose down almost to touching her pee or poop give her a little spanking saying all the things I mentioned above (I'm talking little...like I love pat her with the same force and she likes that, but since she was being scolded at the same time, she knew it was baaaaad!), and then take her to her pad. That was what did it for her. It took several of those, but I'd say we're around 98-99% at least and she's 4 1/2 mo. old. We didn't start the negative reinforcement until she was around 12 wks., and didn't start really getting serious until she was ~15 wks. I'd say her only accidents now really, are when she's got paws on the pad, but is hanging over the edge, or sometimes poop is off the pad when we wake up in the morning--we know she plays with it and even eats it (YUCK-O!!! We're getting a pill to try and stop that.) so we're not sure if she pooped of the pad, or more likely played with it until it wasn't on the pad anymore. (We started working with her with only positive reinforcement from day one when she was 9 wks. old and just gradually got more strict with it as she got older and was capable of more.) Your 6 mo. old babies are capable of going where they're supposed to. I know lots of people struggle with potty training their Yorkies, and I've only had the one experience, but doing what I did worked for Bella. Just sharing what worked for us.... |