Letting your doggie roam the house
 

My yorkie Brody is 8 months old now. He has been working on his potty training since he was 8 weeks old. Which he is doing great at. I use puppy pads. I've been training him only in the living room. He hasn't been allowed out of the living room, just for training purposes. I'm wondering, at what age can I start to let him kind of roam around the house? I want him to be able to follow me around and know that he won't forget he needs to potty in the living room and not wherever he is at that time. :) Thanks for any advice.

I say whenever you feel comfortable to let him roam :). Different ages for different pups... i'd just make sure he's not able to get into anything and maybe have stairs blocked off if you have any.

I agree that age can vary per pup. Maybe start out by letting him out for an hour or two and go from there. Accidents can happen anytime, so just keep reminding him where/when to potty and he'll probably surprise you!

I put a pad just outside her x-pen close to the one inside. I left the door open.
For a while she would go inside the pen to potty. We have wood floors in the living room. After we took down the pen, she was not confused. We kept her bed and all her toys in the same place. She does get confused in the bedroom tho. We have carpet and she sometimes will go on there. I put down 3 pads in there. She is doing well. She is 17 months old now and runs the house. At night she sleeps in her puppy apartment. Naps during the day with me. She does follow me everywhere I go. When we go out, she just lies in her bed until we get home. Such a good girl....:)

Funny you ask this question right at this time hahaha. Gizmo just learned how to get over what I had blocking the kitchen off as well as my staircase for upstairs eeeek. Thankfully I had found some amazing used commercial fishing net on eBay and had been putting off attaching to my staircase, so he can't go through or under the railing (I have an open staircase that my cats find convenient to take a short cut through about half way down, very scared he would follow and kill himself) I live at the beach so it totally goes with the nautical theme my home is decorated with :-) well to say the least, that netting went up tonight......FAST LOL.

I also put an extra potty pad in my guest room as well as the upstairs hallway, because he's only been on hard floors so far and the stairs and whole upstairs area s carpeted, which he is not used to carpet. He has been wanting to chase my other 2 cats that are afraid of his barking at them it seems like forever. It actually went better than I thought :-) I let him explore for about 1 1/2 ours up there, and lets just say it was pretty anticlimactic for little Gizmo :-) My huge cat Sadie, who is a rag doll and weighs about 25 lbs. just sat there as he barked at her over and over, and they were totally face to face hehe.

I think for Gizmo it was like he was like a kid always seeing that shiny new toy he wanted, and then when he got it, well it just wasn't as great as he thought it would be. Neither of the 2 other cats that were afraid of his bark ran from him at all, no matter how hard he tried :-) I think it's even going to get easier from here. The only thing I'm worried about
Is the carpet at this point, as I hurried and got all the little toys from the cats from under the beds and all, although i did chase him all over to get a big hairball he found under one of the beds, that came from my rag-doll :-)I thought all heck was going to break loose once he got up there, that the cats would be running all over and he would be barking forever, but I'm pretty certain at this point it definitely did not measure up, to how much fun Gizmo thought it was going to be lol.

So yea I would say it all depends on the pup :-) Gizmo showed he was completely done with being confined and worked extremely hard to get around us blocking him any further.

Draco is 9monthsand pretty much has the hang of it though he doesn't get access to my room when I'm not in there. Also I live in a one bedroom apartment so probably a lot easier for me than you. But basically I just started giving him a lot more play time outside of his space where he would just follow me and I keep an eye on him but I'd also return to the spot where his pee pads are. They've been in the same since about month after I got him.
In addition to that I started giving him more space to be blocked off in. He had a cast on was supposed to have very limited room. When it came off he went from a small corner in the kitchen, to half the kitchen, to the entire kitchen, to the living room, then the hallway then finally my room. Though like I said when I'm not home I close the door in my room because sometimes I leave in a whirlwind and it isn't exactly puppy safe when I do that.

Bentley is 8 months old now, he has access to the whole apt. I live by myself so I guess it's easy to keep track of him. He's had access to the whole apt sine he was three months old, he was really easy to potty train. Now when I leave he roams the apt but I have to spray apple bitter in every corner because he was chewing on everything! Apple bitter rocks ! :)

I think one of the advice was to slowly broaden the area. I didn't really have that option so I just put pads all over the place. Then started taken one by one away. Took a while but did the trick. I have two pads in the "sitting room". Magnus potty outside but Zoey knows exactly where to go. I blocked off the dining room and the stairs to the 2nd floor. But they're free to roam anywhere else.

The only time Zoey has "accidents" is when she's upset with us. -_-;

I too confine a new Puppy/arrival to the Utility/Kitchen/Breakfast Rms, all Tiled. Then, it's a little more, a little at a time. They're allowed into the Living Room (carpeted) while I'm in there at first, then I can remove the barrier and expand their "free" territory a room at a time. (slowly though)

I think floor covering would dictate this, I have wooden floors much easier to clean up messes so my dogs were free to roam from day one as they came pee pad trained. Teegy I used an expen when I wasn't home for 3 months, so he would have been around 6 months. Tufty I never confined as I didn't think it fair that they couldn't interact with each other.

Different stokes, different folks. I guess it all really depends on the dog, and what you're comfortable with. Since Jackson was very young, I always allowed him wherever I was in the house. I would just keep a very close eye when he was very young. But he's had free roam (as in, when I leave the house, he's not locked up or confined anywhere) since about 5ish months old. He's just always proved to be trustworthy and reliable. If you feel confident, then just go for it! The worst that can happen is an accident. My dog is also not pad trained though, so there was no source of confusion (carpets, rugs, etc).

Thank you everyone. I think I'm going to start letting him roam a little at a time. I don't have stairs to worry about, but every room is carpeted except the kitchen. I'll just have to try it. :) I tried it a few months ago, but he would go to my little girls room and pee/poop in there. I also just recently got him neutered, so that should help with him wanting to mark things. But, it's been a while since then and he doesn't have accidents anymore. And yes, I guess the worse thing that would happen would be him pottying somewhere. :) And if that happens, I'll try again when he's a little older.

Invest in a spot cleaner. I bought both the carpet shampooer and bissel's spot cleaner. :D

How about letting him have one extra room at a time? Example, he has roam of the living room, then add the hallway. If you think he's ready, add the bathroom, then the kitchen, etc. That's kinda what I did.

Definitely do good cleaning/scent removal, if an accident happens outside a permitted area. If that occurs after you expand area, you might clean, then leave a Treat in that area or other areas occasionally, just to remind him those are "living" spaces, not a "potty" spaces.