Sorry for bringing up an old topic, but I just got a Tell Bell and am trying to work with Bailey with it, and have a couple problems/questions.
Bailey's almost 2 years old and has been primarily pad trained. At about 5-6 months I would say she was 90% trained, but then when I went back to work and started leaving her, even though she was confined to the kitchen while I was gone, she started peeing on the carpet when I was home. I still swear that she knows better and does it anyway, because if I see her sniffing around and say her name a certain way she'll stop and look at me, then go to her pad. Another problem I have with pads is that she seems to think rugs, christmas tree skirts, etc. are interchangeable with her pad. So I want to transition her to only going outside.
She will pee in the backyard most of the time when I take her. Many times when I work (8+ hours) and come home I see she hasn't used her pad the whole time so I take her out back to potty. As far as I know she has never done a #2 outside though. But then after initially getting home I just never know when she needs to go so she ends up using the pad (or carpet). That's why I bought a Tell Bell.
The day I started using the Tell Bell with her she figured it out and rang it herself, but she rang it because she wanted to go out and explore and not go potty. So she's still ringing it all the time to go out. So now I want to know how to get her to only ring it for potty. I know one problem is that I'm leaving out an important step of leashing her. When I go to the door with the leash she runs away from me. So a lot of the time when she rings it after she just went I ignore it. But I'm still unsure exactly when she really needs to go out to potty.
