I am moving from a house to an apt. I have only had Prince for two weeks. I have been training him to go outside. Will it be possible for him to do both? I work and go to school I dont want him to have to hold it too long. I started leaving him in the crate when I am gone for longer hrs each time. But he started peeing in the crate now. What should I do? Play pen for the day and pee pee pads? :confused:

I do a combo of outdoor and pee pad training (not that I'm an expert or anything), but so far this method has worked for me. As soon as I wake up in the morning and also when I get home from work, I immediately take my pup outside and we walk to the same patch of grass outside our townhome and he goes pee right away. During the day though, I don't expect him to hold in his pee for 8 hours, so I have puppy pads in his pen. A helpful tip that I've been using to puppy pad train is if Wall-E pees somewhere he's not supposed to, before I clean it up, I take a puppy pad and soak up some of his pee with it, then I take some WEE WEE pad training spray and spray it on the pad. For some reason, this method has been working GREAT with Wall-E. He uses the pads about 70% of the time when he's in his pen versus 40% of the time before I started doing that.

Hope that helps!

V - Does the grass on the patio work? We are selling our townhouse and we are going to relocate and rent for a while before we get a house. Mine are trained only to go outside, to ring a bell when they want out. Since we don't have a fence, they just go out on leashes and we can continue to do that but I thought if we had a balcony we could put one of those sod boxes out there. Loki can't wait until we have a fence so he can help himself to going outside.

I walk them once or twice a day now, depending on weather, but they have the whole house to run around and play all day.

I need "poop Training" help!!!
 

I trained Jack (10 Month) to go on a pee-pad. He does it for pee 100% of the time but poop, he does not want to use it. It is in a spare bathroom we have so in the AM (6:00 when I get up) I take him in a shut the door and he goes right away. At night, he usually NEEDS to go between 5-6pm. I will take him in and he will hold it until I let him out. Saturday night I spent and hour in there. Once I let him out he waited about 5 minutes and went on the floor. Ugg... I dont know what to do!

Thanks for your advice. I hope it works.

Hey everyone. We live in an apartment but we are having the hardest time potty training our little Jack (he is almost 6 months old and we brought him home three weeks ago). We bought him from a breeder but I don't think she was much of a breeder at all. If I recall correctly she might have said she doesn't let the puppies outside. It should have set off a redflag for me but he was just too darn cute. I have a feeling he was use to going potty inside but I bet it wasn't on potty pads because he never uses them! He went about 4 or 5 days without having an accident with me but when my husband or brother is here and Jack is out of his kennel he consistantly has accidents. He just had two accidents today with me and he was out not even two hours before it occured. Is there anything I can do to get him to always go outside? I really want to eliminate the idea of him going potty under the roof.
Just to give you an idea how many times a day he goes out are..... 8:30-9 (whenever I get up but usually 8:30), then again at like 1, and again at 6 and finally for the night at like 11. He sleeps in the bed with us and has never had an accident at night so we are allowing him to continue sleeping on the bed.

Scratch that..... I just finished my post and he pee again. It's so hard to tell if he's sitting or squatting now since he was just neutered and he sits funny now. And the "second" accident involved him in the poop position but I got him outside but he didn't go. I just don't know what to do. I researched Yorkies before we got him and even so now that we got him to try different things but I'm just not finding anything that works. And I am not even sure if he even likes my attention.

First off, you might want to try posting this in a new thread so that people will see it more easily.

Second, it's great that the breeder did not let her puppies outside. I'm sure there were other signs but that alone is not a bad thing. It's important for puppies to be protected by staying indoors until they have finished all of their shots. When we got Franklin, he stayed inside for 2 whole months before we let him outside. Part of that was due to him getting sick and delaying his vaccinations.

Third - as far as training goes, something that has REALLY helped me was to find a treat that REALLY motivates them. Franklin and Maggie go absolutely nuts over cheese so I always take a piece of cheese with me. When the potty, I tear off little pieces and treat them with it. That is the ONLY time they get cheese. Now when they potty (even if it's inside :rolleyes:), they look up to us for the cheese. You also really need to be taking him out more often to prevent accidents. We take Franklin (who is 10 months) and Maggie who is (3 1/2 years) out every two hours when we're home. When we're not, they go out first thing in the morning, first thing when we get home (they are crated), and then before we put them up in their crate and before bedtime. I'm sure they could hold it longer but I prefer to be safe... they go every time so it's not a problem for us.

Another thing I REALLY advocate is clean clean clean! If you can completely rid the smell of urine, there will be less motivation for him to pee. Get a blacklight, a good enzyme cleaner, and a steam cleaner. The blacklight will be able to tell you every spot that you've missed cleaning. Once you find those spots, saturate them with an enzyme cleaner such as Nature's Miracle, Simple Solution, or PetZyme. The enzymes will actually eat away at the particles that get stuck in the fibers of your carpet. Let it dry overnight and then clean the stain with a steam cleaner.

Confinement is my last suggestion. If you are not in a position where you cannot keep an eye on him EVERY SINGLE SECOND to stop him in case he starts to pee, then he needs to be in an ex-pen. Buy baby gates and gate him into the room where you are so that you can see him at all times. The minute you see a potty sniff, take him outside.

Good luck! :) It takes patience and time. You've only had him for 3 weeks. It's taken us almost 7 months to potty train Franklin. Your dog is still a puppy, he will have accidents.. it's a fact.

Thank you so much for the reply. I posted in here because people seem to be active in here. I know there is no quick fix to potty training and it will take time. Jack loves cheese too but I have heard that it is not good for a dog's digestive system. We have treats that taste like cheese (or so the package says but I am not up to trying them to see if they really taste authentic). But he does not like to eat treats of any kind all of the time. He seems to go days without touching any treats if we give them to him. I am buying baby gates tomorrow to keep him in the room with us but mainly to keep him out of the cat litter. Plus it would be nice to have doors open but him not able to get in places he cant go right now. And I LOVE, just love the cleaning idea. I would have never thought to be so thourogh. I figured just a bottle of urine cleaning agent would be satisfactory. But I do notice he does sniff around which means it could still smell. Thank you for your help. I will let you know how it goes.

I live in an apartment, too, and I found that what worked with Spike was to take him outside every two hours, especially when he was a pup. Now he's a bit older we can go out once every three or four hours with no problems.

I also trained him to use pee pads by putting down pads wherever he peed. After a while, you'll start to notice two or three pads the he uses consistently. Start by removing the other pads one at a time, say one every few days. Be sure to praise him whenever he uses his pad, and if he has an accident elsewhere, there is not much you can do unless you catch him in the act. If you catch him, immediately say 'no!', and carry him to his pad and put him on it, saying something like 'on your pad'. If you don't catch him in the act, then there's no real point in scolding or disciplining him. Just make sure you clean the stain very well to eliminate any lingering smells.

As for walks, we go on one walk in the park a day, but we go outside (around our parking lot) about four times a day for about ten minutes a time. That seems to do us nicely!

I am moving into an apartment in just a couple weeks and have thought about trying pee pads again for times when there is bad weather, etc. Lucy is almost 3. I tried pee pads when she was a puppy but I could never get her to use them. She did like to drag them around though. We are looking to get another puppy in a month or so and I would like to train her to use the pee pads in addition to going outside. Any advice? And how do I keep Lucy from playing with the pee pads? She does really well and very seldomly has an accident, so trying to retrain her is not as big of an issue as the new puppy.

Sarah515:

My pup is outdoor and pee pad trained. What worked for me is taking a pee pad and blotting some of Wall-E's pee with it and also using Wee Wee potty training spray... and then when he was in his pen, he would pick up his scent on the pee pad and eventually learned thats where he's supposed to go. It took a few weeks of MANY accidents on the carpet, but he's 4 months now and he's doing great going on the pad. He would also shred the pee pad at first, but we bought a pee pad holder from Petco where you put the pad in this tray and fold the edges down so its secure... worked wonders for us! Another YT member also suggested spraying bitter spray on the edge of the pads or try taping down the pad onto the floor so they can't pick it up and shred it.

Good luck.

we're no experts on the issue as we've only had humphrey for a week and he is just 8 weeks old. However, what we did was buy a small pet carrier and a large crate, the crate has pee pads everywhere and he has enough space for food, water and toys. If i let him out, he will pee on the floor, so we opted for keeping him inside the crate and leave the carrier's door open in case he wants to go in for a nap. So far, he has chosen a corner to pee and we always make a HUGE deal out of him peeing on the same spot (clicker, treat and a cuddle). He is such a smart puppy, the breeder was some guy who let his 10 dogs roam free around his flat and they'd pee and poo wherever they felt like...the first two days Humphrey was just a monster and left presents EVERYWHERE. My husband takes him out for 1 hour walks in the morning, after lunch and before bed, he rarely pees but he will always poo... we haven't had a poo incident in over 4 days. It seems to us he doesn't like going poo in the crate (which is great because for such a tiny baby he sure knows how to stink up a room)

YES it works fantastic - mine is indoor outdoor carpet called grass and I LOVE IT...I clean it just with the hose - or the rain cleans it - and once a month I put light bleach under them - I have 3/4 of my back patio now done in the fake grass