[May01]

I would like to start transitioning my 4 month old yorkie poo from using the pee pad to going outside. He can hold it all night in his crate and hasn't had an accident in a while other than aiming a bit off the pee pad. I currently have him sleep in a crate in my bedroom at night and during the day he stays in the kitchen where I have a pee pad in the corner. He plays and runs to the pee pad to do his business pretty reliably. He also knows that he must go potty at the beginning every time I take him out to the backyard.

Ultimately I want to get him to ring a bell to signal to me he has to go potty. I live in a 3 storey townhouse and I don't know how to go about training him to tell me he needs to go outside. He spends most of his time on the 2nd floor in the kitchen and does not get free house roaming privileges yet. Plus I have a lot of stairs to get past until he reaches the bottom floor to the backyard. He can go up and down the stairs but I just don't feel like it's safe for him to do so on his own just to ring the bell to go out. I've seen him go downstairs too fast and flip and fall down the last 2 steps.

Should I start off by taking out the pee pad in the kitchen and then retrain him to ring a bell before going out? Maybe when he learns to use the bell, I can keep one in the kitchen where the pee pad used to be?