As some of the others have said, it will take quite some time before there are no more accidents. From my experience I think using a crate at night and during the day while you are gone works very well and they usually will hold it until you let them out because they don't want to go where they sleep. I haven't used the pads so maybe your experience will be different. It seems to me though that it would be kinda hard to teach them to go on a pad when in the house and to try to get them to go outside when you're home. Just a thought. In my case we started using the crate when Samson was 3 months old. At first I didn't want to keep him confined because I'm a softy so we put him in the bathroom with old towels on one side of the room. He started only going on the towels which was good but when he was out of the bathroom he just went wherever. We knew we wanted to train him to go outside so I eventually gave in and started with the crate. At first he had one or two poo poo accidents in the crate but after that he never had another accident in the crate. Now he is almost 7 months and occaisonally will have an accident in the house but he is definetely getting better.
I didn't mean for this to be so long but I just wanted to share what has seemed to be working for us
