I'm a big believer in crate training. I did it with my first dog Alfie and it was such a success that I'm currently doing it with my new Yorkie, Princess.
I got Alfie when he was a bit older. Not your typical 8-10 week old puppy so he could hold his bladder through the night. Our routine with Alfie was: potty break right before bed, into the crate for night time, and straight to the potty once my alarm woke me up for class the next morning. We did this consistently and he became potty trained so easily! I never really used puppy pads with him so he knew his potty was outdoors. Now when I say, "Time to go potty" he goes straight to the grass to do his business.
So here's the situation: Princess is 11 weeks old so I know she has a weak bladder right now and needs to go every 2.5 hours. I currently have her area set up in my room where it's an exercise pen, the whole floor of the exercise pen is covered with puppy pads, her crate in the corner of the xpen, and her food and water bowl in the other corner. This is her area for when it's time to sleep and when I need to go out somewhere and can't take her. I leave her crate open all the time so she can step out to go potty on the puppy pads if she was in the crate. Is this a good idea? I thought the whole idea of using crate training for potty training is to keep them inside the crate with the door closed so they know that when you take them out to their designated area to go potty, they learn that they need to potty there every time? Should I be closing the door to her crate (at night only) and waking up every 2.5-3 hours to take her to potty on a puppy pad (not outside yet because she hasn't had all her vaccines)? Or is my current set up okay in your opinion?
She hasn't had an accident yet and has pee'd and pooped on the puppy pads the whole time she's been here but it's only been two days so I'm not really celebrating yet, lol.
Any opinion/advice is welcomed
