Originally Posted by RockyDad (Post 4666086)

Hi,
I live in Michigan where during the winter it gets to around 10F. Last winter my Yorkie was only a few months old and we were just starting to house train him so we were letting him go potty where ever. This next winter he'll be over a year old and has grown a lot during the this time. He's currently a little over 7lbs and while before we were afraid of him jumping off the couch because we thought he could break something, he now jumps on the couch, off the couch, and goes up and down a few stairs with out any problem and we feel comfortable letting him do this without fear of him getting hurt like when he was smaller. However, we still mostly have him go potty in the house on puppy pads. My question is do you guys let your dog go out to go potty in the winter? I'd love to be able to let him go out to go potty and get rid of the puppy pads, but I am concerned that it might be too cold for him to go out even for a minute to go potty. I feel like it would waste too much time to dress him up, i.e. boots, sweater, for him to go outside and by the time he's dressed up if he had to go he would have probably gone in the house anyway.

So what do you guys do? Do you have your dog go potty outside in the summer and inside in the winter? Do you have an area in the basement or garage with puppy pads where your dog goes potty? Or do you just let your dog go outside all year round and the cold weather, although unpleasent, doesn't bother them too much? Right now it's kind of nasty with puppy pads through out our dinning room which is where he prefered to go. By the way he still has a good amount of accidents but we have hardwood floors so it's not that big of a deal to clean up.


Thanks in advance for your thoughts and comments.