ppotty training my new yorkie
 

I rescued a 5 month old yorkie from a breeder. We have had her for 3 months and I can not get her house broken. We are trying to piddle pad train her since she is so small and we have really hard winters here.
I don't use a crate, we don't believe in caging our pets. I do have a gate in the kitchen to confine her at night. She does really well one day but the next day is terrible. We keep going back and forth. She has just recently been spayed. Any suggestions?

We give Mickey a cheerio when he goes on the pad. He goes there every time now. Also tried it on our new Malti-poo 8 week old and he hits it every time now.

What have you tried so far in your training methods?

Btw, welcome to YT :)!!!

potty training
 

thanks for the Cherrio suggestion. We have been using the praise method when she does well and the bad dog when she isn't. We've tried giving her time outs in the kitchen but that doesn't seem to work. We've had other breeds of dogs that this has been successful with. This is the 1st Yorkie we have had.

I hear you on the Midwestern winters. I have a 5 lb and 8 lb girl that are potty pad trained. It took close to a year on one and a little over a year on the other one but now they have free roam of my house except a few rooms that will always be gated off because of area rugs.


What works for one Yorkie won't work for the next, so try different methods to see what works for you. If you don't want to pin her up in a cage, have you thought about an x pen?


This is what worked for me.......I put mine in an x pen with water, food and a potty pad. She would come out only when I could watch her and then back in her x pen with potty pads covering the entire floor. When I would catch her pottying on her pad..... lots of praise and a treat. Every week I would cover the floor a little less with potty pads. When she would go more on the potty pad and less on the floor I would open up the x pen to maybe a corner of the room but she stayed in the x pen unless I could follow her around full time. Within about a month she would have free roam of my kitchen only, then kitchen and laundry room. If I found accidents, I didn't scold or time out, I just went back to a smaller area of confinement. Be consistent, have plenty of patience, treats and praise for the good behavior. Ignore the accidents, don't scold, just clean up and go from that moment on.


The first time you see your little girl running from one room to go potty on her pad your heart will melt, mine did. Good luck, she will get it eventually.

I think there are sprays that you can find at PetSmart called "housebreaking sprays". They have some kind of pheromone/attractant in it that induces peeing. Perhaps you could try it?

I would recommend giving her an X-pen until she is fully housebroken, and completely potty-pad or newspaper the entire floor. It will give her less places for her to go potty on. I would also heavily praise and give her treats if you catch her using the potty pad. If you see her sniffing around or showing any signs of peeing or pooping, bring her over to the pad immediately and set her down there.

For a somewhat cheaper way to buy puppy pads, here is a box of 100 of them at Amazon for $19.99: Amazon .

I've also heard of some people using dog litter, in case the puppy pads get too pricey.
A 25 pound bag is $23.99: Amazon

Since you mentioned she's recently been spayed, it's worth noting that that can make her regress in her potty training for a bit. Whatever method you have been using, you'd want to really reinforce it for a while since she's recovering from that.

I also fully agree with confining them and then taking them to potty and praising like crazy when they do. Idk anything about the "bad dog" thing, but rather than calling them a bad dog, maybe just say a firm NO when they potty in the wrong place. The biggest thing with potty training is to build up their confidence, make them feel good about what they're doing, so they'll continue to do it right.

Best of luck and be sure to share a pic when you can :)

My boo would not go outside period. Hes 5 months . Found out he likes to be walked. Today he went out three times just fine. Hoping he will just go out the door once he understands what potty means. Especially with winter coming.