Well this has been a fun thread to read :) I love the bell trick. My girl thinks she is so cool when she goes potty outside and likes to go on our walks. We primarily use potty pads though. I am curious how big are your pups who potty outside and what are the different outdoor set ups that folks around here have? I have a few mental pictures of a potty specific direct link to the door outdoor space that I have thought about creating here at our house. I can't imagine losing the potty pad as an option though....

I took care of a woman's sweet little yorkie girl for almost a month about a year before I got lilah and it was a great experienced for me. Her name was Riley and she was a sweetheart and not a good fit for our home. She was very timid (everything has a long backstory and I won't thread hijack with this one) and was expected to go potty outside and taking this poor little baby out in the Columbia river gorge wind and nine months out of the year oregon rain- well, she was terrified when a leaf fluttered by- but this poor girl had a very hard time going potty outside and it was a real set up for accidents. I think that experience definitely inclined me to the decision (preparing for lilah) that lilah would have potty pads. Her interest in potty outside actually took me by surprise and she is a true blue bold yorkie gal (great fit for our busy loud family) but she is still quite small and well, our general blustery weather conditions are still the ame as a rule. So I would be curious to hear about the atmosphere/conditions your outdoor potty pups have and how that works/doesn't work or y'all have made it work for you, thanks guys/ladies :)

Lilah Charm :

My yorkie is 8 lbs and my chihuahua is 7 lbs. I didn't have a fenced in yard before I started outdoor potty training, so my husband made me a 600 sq. ft. area around the front door which is where I wanted the dogs to go out. It works perfectly. But, since I had them pottying on command, I just opened the door and told them to "go potty" and they would do their business and come back in. I live in Missouri so we get all the different types of weather. Bad snow, ice, cold temps and sleet in the winter and lots of rain in the spring and summer. And they both do well in the snow and rain. They actually do better in those conditions because they don't like it. So they will go as quickly as possible to come back in.

I actually liked the thought of them being able to use potty pads. That's why I started training them to potty on them when they were puppies. But, I was using washable puppy pads. They started to smell after a while and the pads wouldn't absorb their pee fast enough so they would step in it, which would then get all over my carpeted floors and furniture. So that's when I decided to outside potty train them and I absolutely love it.