I am struggling with this whole issue as well. Reggie is 16 weeks old and and weighs 4 lbs. I have always crate trained my dogs before but Reggie is the first small dog I have owned and he is totally different. First of all, he came down with intestinal parasites the day after I got him at 8 weeks old and had diarrhea off and on for a while until the meds started kicking in. So the crate training was out the window because he would get so stressed over it that the diarrhea was getting worse. I bought him a puppy playpen and put a wee wee pad in it, his crate without the door on it and some food and water. This worked well for his first few weeks. Around 12 weeks we started letting him stay in the kitchen with a nursery gate over the door way so he could have more room to roam as I was starting to work again as a substitute teacher. He really likes it in the kitchen, has a soft bed in there and l left him plenty of toys, food and water. About 2 weeks ago he decided to start shredding his wee wee pads. Now I am totally frustrated because he tears them up on every turn and tends to want to eat pieces of them. I tried newspapers and he tore them up as soon as I put them down. I don't know what to do now. I have tried taking him outside a few times but he is clueless as to what to do out there and it is cold here now as well. Where does one get the reusable wee wee pads? That might be an option for me when I have to leave him since he couldn't eat them. I am sure he would still play with them though as he likes to steal towels from the clean laundry basket and play with those. |