Oh I feel the pains of potty training. Trust me I went through a lot of the same feelings of frustration with SophieKate. I tried pad training and that never did work so I went directly into crate training and so far kind of good (knock on wood).
I got SophieKate when she was three months old back in September and I was clueless on how to potty train a dog. After a few days of failed attempts with the pads I went out and bought a small ICrate. This crate was just big enough for her to stand up and turn around but it had all the comforts of home (a nice lambs wool pad and her fleece blanket). The most important suggestion I got was getting the small crate and in the beginning do not put their food and water in with her. That came with a warning of making sure my puppy gets out of the crate on a regular basis for water and to eat.
Second thing I had to discover was her schedule and try to work it into my schedule. At first I took her out every hour during the day and whenever she whined at night. That was only for a very short time, I than increased it to every two hours and I tracked what she would "do".
We are now at it for 6 months and I would safely say SophieKate is 95% potty trained. The times she does have a pee accident is when I am not paying attention to her or the time - that is totally my fault.
As far as crate training, SophieKate still goes into her the crate (a bigger model) when she is home alone. She doesn't seem to mind it, in fact I leave the door open on her crate and she will go in there and take a nap when we are home. I also leave fresh water in her crate and if I am going to be gone for a while I will put food in there for her.
Potty training has given me gray hairs but the puppy kisses are so worth the gray hairs.
Hang in there, you will figure it out with a lot of good advice from fellow Yorkie Talkers.
__________________ Cheryl,Mom to  SophieKate |