[QuickSilver]

No shame, Sandysbabies. Thor is two and a half! I've only officially owned him for a few months now, but it took me some time to realize he wasn't potty trained. I was patting myself on the back for training him to hold it for up to five hours at a time, and was in complete denial about the yellow puddles I was finding everywhere.

Have you tried the puppy pad holders? Those are supposed to prevent dogs from carrying them off. Are you training for inside/outside, inside only, or outside only?

I think here are the basics of potty training:

- Confine them to the smallest area you can trust them in. To begin with, this will be a crate or xpen.

- Set a schedule. I'll admit I'm not much of a schedule person, so I changed this to making a rule that Thor did not get to come out of his crate until he peed on his pad.

- Until they are going potty in the right place reliably, you must watch them AT ALL TIMES while they are not confined. This is the really tough one. They are fast and sneaky, and it takes a lot of attention to make sure they're not spilling a drop here or there.

- WHILE they are going, assign a phrase like "Potty" or "Hurry Up".

- Give them a treat RIGHT after they go and praise them like crazy.

- If you catch them in the act, clap your hands, pick them up, and put them in the right place. Emphasize the command phrase - "This is where you go POTTY". You can ONLY correct the dog if you catch him/her in the act. If you find an accident after the fact, the dog needs to be confined more closely, or you need to be watching more closely. Take it as a learning experience.

- Your dog is probably going to mess up, and you're probably going to get frustrated. That's okay, but remember the the dog is doing the best it can, all evidence to the contrary.

- Clean up any messes with an enzyme cleaner to keep the dog from being tempted to mess in that area again.

Let us know how it goes!