The world is my potty
 

Argh! I thought I'd gotten Thor almost completely house broken, but there has either been a major regression or he was not trained to begin with.

It's the same old sad story. I took Thor out about fifteen minutes ago... no potty. We came back to my office, and I just picked him up and felt some wetness. I look down and see a tiny little dark spot on the rug. Right between my feet.

I don't get it. Thor knows he's supposed to go outside, or at least tends to go outside. He holds it all night and races out the front door as fast as he can when he wakes up. HOWEVER, I've been checking very carefully for "accidents" and I think I've seen one every day this week. It's tough, because he's so small and fast, he can squeeze out a few drops in the blink of an eye. The messes are often hard to see. I sure can smell this one, though.

I guess I'm going to try training him on pee pads... and I guess maybe a bell too. I don't know what's going on his head. This spot was so tiny, there's no way he couldn't have held it for another hour....

The world is my potty
 

Oh my. I feel for you. I've got a 2 1/2 yo male and he does the same thing only he sits in front of me and cries so I let him out. But I'm still seeing those yellow carpet marks on the corners of my wall. He knows he is supposed to go out. I have a female yorkie that is completely potty trained and she would die before she messed in the house. And he goes out with her and does his business. He does every once in a while go on the "paper" pee pad. And when I see a "tootsy roll" on the paper we have a big ole time. He's so proud when he see's how happy I am. But the next time I'll see a "tootsie roll" and I ask him in a disappointed voice "Why is there a tootsie roll on the floor he gets sad and goes to hide under the bed. So here is my analogy on the situation. Could it be that they are just like young children and get so busy doing what ever that they wait till the last second to take off for outside and just don't make it? I just don't understand why they do good one second and bad the next.
The only advice I can give you is for you to get a "belly band". I use one on my boy and I stick a feminine pad to it and wrap it around his belly covering his penis it is about 4 inches wide and velcros closed on top of is back. I can send you a picture of him wearing one and if you think it would work for your baby I can give you the ladies email that made mine. there like $15 if I remember correctly. Saves your carpet for sure. :)
Kim

OMIGOD!!!!!!

Thor peed on the pee pad!!

I am so thrilled, I can't even tell you. He disappeared for a second and when I followed him into the living room, there was a bright yellow spot on the pad! YAAAAAAAY!

FYI, I have tried pads off and on with Thor and he never seemed to get what they were for. This time I used the pee pad to blot an earlier "accident", and used Nature's Miracle on the accident area. I really think his own pee smell helped. Those special drops you can buy never did it for him either - it's genuine Thor pee or nothing!

Hehe ... absolutely
It's all smell to them
It's very important while you are housetraining to also leave the pee pads down so they have both means for elimination

:bravo::bravo::bravo:

Way to go THOR!!!

And today, tragedy strikes again. I found a stinky little yellow puddle in the bathroom that must be from yesterday. When was he IN the bathroom? I've been jocking him 24/7.

He is so getting his teeth brushed today. And just for spite, a bath too!

Aw, I know what you are going through. Just when I think Baxter is getting the hang of it, I catch him peeing by the door. And just little, tiny, itsy bitsy spots. And then sometimes, I'll see him prance over to his pee pad and pee, just like it was nothing! I just don't get it. :rolleyes:

Oh yeah. I know exactly how you feel. Charlie has been doing soooo good, but just last night he left me a little "tootsie roll" in the corner of my bed!! When I looked at him, he knew he made a mess. That makes it even harder because they know that they messed up. So then this morning he goes to the door to be let out to potty. He does number 1 AND 2. Perhaps to make it up for last night.

Whooooooo!!!!!!!!
 

Thor used the pee pad again! For the second time in his life. Maybe not an actual pattern, but I see the start of great things!

I finally sucked it up and put Thor into potty training boot camp. He and I have been confined to my living room at all times, unless I'm sleeping (my bed, which he won't soil), or at work (he's on my desk, which he won't soil, and he can't jump off of). I also got a bell which he is currently terrified of.

I've also been treating and praising every time he goes outside. All the stuff I knew I needed to do, but I thought I could get away with, since he was like 85% house trained.

Anyway, he woke me up at 3:30 this morning and was barking at random sounds, roaming around my bed and generally being a pain in the ass. I decided to get up for a bit, so I put him in the living room and puttered around the apartment for a few minutes. When I get back, I see the most beautiful yellow spot I have ever laid my eyes on, right on the pee pad.

Just the evening he had been NAPPING on the pee pad, and I thought, wow, Thor is just not a pee pad kind of dog.

So my question is: when can I let him have free run of my apartment again? The living room is the only room I have with a door, besides the bathroom, so unless I buy two baby gates, it's either the living room or the full apartment. When do I have assurance that he's sees potty as something ONLY to be done outside or on a pad, not in random corners where I might not notice?

As I understand doggie behavior, I think Thor just couldn't hold it, and since the living room is now his "den", he used the most likely pee spot he could find. But what if he doesn't consider the rest of my apartment his "den"?

I told myself I would wait until he learned to use the bell, which I think is going to take another couple weeks. I can live with that, I guess, I've only been camped out in the living room one week, and I figured it could take three.

Will he ever completely learn what he is supposed to do?

Sorry for the novel, I'm groggy and excited all at once.

good job Thor! Are you training him to go outside and use the pee pad at the same time? That is difficult now both of mine are but I trained them to go outside then trained them to use the pee pad. I would continue to keep him confined for a while untill your sure he has it. Good luck

By the way I love how you titled this thread. It makes me laugh everytime I see it

milu is pee pad trained and she also goes outside when we go for a walk.

if you would like to pee pad train thor. (i think pee pad training is a great idea for small dogs) then i can share with you what i did with milu :)

it is important to be consistent when you try to pee pad train. you don't take thor out to potty anymore while you are trying to get him to understand what the pee pad is for. and everytime he goes on the pad you make a very big deal out of it,(good boy thor! in a very happy and excited vocie.) and give a treat immediately. if he goes potty anywhere else besides the pee pad, you pick him up and run him to the pad and say "potty" (or whatever word you use)

you can also put his pee on the pad, when you clean his accidents, put the tissue with his pee on the pad for smell, so he knows what the pad is for.

if thor doesn't like to chew up pee pads this can really work for him.

milu loves going pee on the pee pad now. she will try to go on the pad as often as possible to receive a treat! sometimes when she wants a treat, she will go to the pee pad and try REALLY hard to see if she can squeeze something out. it's really cute!

i also did the bell thingy, but that didn't work for us, milu didn't understand what it was for. maybe it will work for thor.

milu and i have a code for it now. whenever she needs to go to the bathroom, she will scuff her feet. then mommy will know.

i don't know how she came up with that, but she did, so it's really helpful! :D
she is such a smart baby! i love her! lol:D

it is important that you don't take thor out to potty when you are trying to pad train him. this means he will have accidents in the house. but each accident can be view as a teaching opportunity. you get to pick him up, run him to the pee pad, and tell him "potty"

it takes a while to train, but it is really worth it!!!! :thumbup:

i followed milu around the house all day when i was pad training her. and i was basically WAITING for her to have to go pee or #2 so i can give her her pee pad training lesson! lol :)

good luck to you and cute baby thor! hope it works out! :D

Thanks! I am going to try to get Thor on the pee pads in addition to going outside. My main reason for doing this is that I noticed that when we played indoors, he would invariably pee after a minute or two, even if he had just been out. Sometimes he would just blatantly lift his leg, but other times, he'd lean forward for literally 1/2 second and squeeze out a drop. It wasn't always easy to tell if he'd peed.

I thought maybe he didn't want to stop having fun to get leashed up and taken outside, so I thought maybe a pee pad would give him a place for a quick pit stop.

THEN I realized that even though he goes outside, he was still marking indoors. He never poops indoors, but he is free with his pee.

Ideally I would like to train him both ways. He is always very prompt on walks, and relieves himself within five minutes of being outside, so I don't want to undo that. The pee pad option would be good for travelling, though.

yes, i know, milu does both as well (goes on pad and outdoors as well)

what i was saying is that in order to have better success with the pad training, it is better to let him go only on the pad when you are in the process of pad training, otherwise you will confuse them. they won't associate it as going on the pad, they will just think that you mean going in the 'house' is ok as well as going outside of the house.

since thor already knows how to go potty outside the house. he will be ok and continue to do both (pad and outdoors) but for the purpose of training, it's a lot easier if you only allow him to go on the pad in the house until he gets the idea.

what i did with milu is that i would still walk her, but only after she already went to the bathroom on the pee pad, until she is fully pee pad trained. then you can walk thor whenever you want, and when you are not there, thor can just use the pee pad if he really needs to go.

another important thing is to have enough pee pads around the house. i have pee pads in three different areas in the house. that way where ever milu is at, she has access to a pad without having to travel really far for it.

she also has favorite spots for going #2, she tend to like to use the pad that is in the most private area. harder for anyone to see her going to the bathroom. :)

My two never seem to be potty trained. Heard to give them the peanut chips you bake with, only for going outside to potty. I've been doing it for three months now and it's working great. Hope this works for yours.

Sorry it should of said peanut butter chips.

What you're saying makes sense. I guess I have a fear of letting Thor hold it until he just can't bear it anymore, like I'm forcing him to pee his pants! You know what I mean? Like if he thinks he's not supposed to pee inside, I don't want to push him to that point.

Before walks, I usually put him on the pad and tell him, "go potty." He usually stares at me for a while, wondering what the heck I'm talking about.

Thank you for your help!

i know what you mean about making him feel like he has to hold it forever. that's how i felt. but the truth is, they WILL GO! and that is your opportunity to show them where they are supposed to go!

so that's what i did with milu. as soon as she went potty on the pad, and if i knew that she doesn't need to go anymore, off we go for a walk! :D

there were a couple of times when milu just had accidents and i didn't see her in time to give her her pad training lesson. then i just cleaned it up and make sure i pay closer attention to her.

i think overall, it will take less time to pad train if you do it the way i am suggesting. but you are the mommy, and you know your baby best. :D

i am happy i did it that way with milu, because now she really understands what a pee pad is for. i can go anywhere with her, and know that all i need to do is bring a pee pad with me, and show her where it is, and she will not have an accident. :thumbup:

I have said this myself a thousand times about my Lucy. She is 2.5 years old and a very busy dog. No time for potty, really. I have scheduled times I take her out, to remind her to go. Otherwise, she finds herself stuck at the last minute!

Let's hear it for lucky number 3! That's 1, 2, THREE times Thor has used his pad! His average is now more than once per year! WHOOOOOO!

I'm still not quite sure what I'm trying to do here. I'm locked in the living room and am 98% sure he isn't marking my antique japanese chest. I have a bell, which Thor tolerates, but would rather die that ring himself. I praise him for outdoor pees and poos, and I think that message is getting through: I'm pretty sure he tried to fake-poop last night to get a treat. And I have a pee pad, which has now been used twice in one week.

I guess I'm waiting for Thor to give me a clear signal when he wants to go out (bell), or, failing that, going to a pad and leaving me out of the process. Either one is fine with me, as long as we get a system going.

All hail the timely pee of THOR!

LMAO, we get fake pees and poos all the time in an attempt to get treats, thought thankfully that's starting to taper off finally. Unfortunately we were fooled at first, so now we have to carefully inspect the area (with a flashlight at night) to make sure it was a real pee. Sheesh, they're way too smart.

Lauren & Nikko

I really had a good laugh at this. Sounds like a page out of Lucy's book. She's a great faker. When I'm too lazy to go outside and see what's been done, we have "hoo ha" checks when she comes back inside- LOL! If it looks wet, she peed.

Teresa

Update: Thor peed on the pad today and received both lavish praise and yogurt. I got optimistic and let him out of the living room for approximately 30 seconds, which he used to pee in my bedroom. :rolleyes: I did manage to catch him in the act and put him on the pee pad, though of course he acted like he'd never seen it before. Two steps forward, one step back, I guess.

Nikko started sliding backward with potty training a little bit, probably because he'd use his bell to tell us he wanted to pee, play outside, go for a walk, AND play with the neighbor dog. So we started telling him "no" sometimes when he rang the bell and we knew he didn't have to pee... I think that backfired, because that was about the time we started finding pee spots on our carpet :-(

Anyways, we moved the bell over to a door that leads straight to the potty zone instead of our front door that we use for everything else. Hopefully that will work, and we are also giving peanut butter chips a try. He got his first one today and he LOVED it! The only little problem is that 5 minutes after giving him one, he turns into insano sugar rush dog... then 15-30 minutes later, passes out into a sugar coma, lol. I'm going to start eating half the chip myself, and giving him only a half when he pees/poos... hopefully that'll help. Thanks for the tip though! Hopefully this'll help him relearn the new door quicker.

Lauren & Nikko

If it's any consolation, Nikko is still way ahead of Thor. Thor has yet to ring the bell, period.

HOWEVER, he did use the pee pad again today, and for exactly the reason I got it - he was racing around like he was on fire, and in the middle of his fun, he made a pee stop. Whoo hoo! I think he's actually used the pad three days in a row. If he really takes to the pad, I might get rid of the bell, since that seems to only be the start of the journey for Nikko!

LOL, how old is Thor anyways? Goodness he's cute.

Don't give up on the bell! Even with all our little problems with it, I still think it's absolutely wonderful. And honestly looking back on it, I feel like I'm pretty sure all the problems were our fault. We would ring the bell, get him to pee, then go directly on out for a walk. Or not ring the bell, but go out the same door to see the neighbor's dog and play. These little dogs are smart, too smart. I only wish I would have been smart enough to use the other door from day one, but lesson learned and we're back in potty training boot camp again. I can only blame myself :(, ya know? Still, I really believe it you are super insanely dilligent, attentive, and consistent, it doesn't really take these guys too long to learn anything, including where the best place to potty is to get that yummy treat :thumbup:

Good luck with Thor, I have faith in him (and by him, I really mean you) ;-)

Lauren & Nikko

Thor is 2 1/2 years old. His previous owner never fully trained him. I think she had a studio apartment he knew he couldn't mark, and then he would roam over our offices and pee wherever he wanted with no one the wiser.

I do have two doors leaving my apartment, so I suppose I could designate one of them the potty door... they both lead into the same hallway, though.

Yaaaaaaay! Thor was acting kind of antsy, so I put him on the pee pad and told him to go potty... AND HE DID! It was so cool, I can't even tell you. It was a total "click" moment!

Aw, awesome :-) I remember now reading some of your other posts about Thor - I'm sure you'll be able to get him trained, but it'll take a bit.

Here's another example of how smart these dudes are - In two days, Nikko has already figured out his new bell, AND his new treats. On the second day, he rang the bell to be let out to pee, and then proceeded to do three short little pees outside instead of his normal one big pee so he could get three treats! The peanut butter chips are now being split into fourths, lol. But there've been no accidents in the last couple days either! I just hope this keeps up - for Thor and for Nikko. Gotta love those "ah-ha!" moments. :-)

If you keep up with the bell or really any encouraging him to pee outside at all, I would definitely designate one door to be a potty door, and one door an everything-else door if you possibly can, even though they lead to the same hall. Just my 2 cents, from my experience. :thumbup: