Please help a new puppy mommy

Please share your tips for housebreaking your puppy. Marley is a very well behaved puppy, but has accidents as expected. I know it is more my fault than hers, so I was wondering if you can pass along some tips.

Marley sleeps in her crate beside our bed. I wake up at 6AM and put her in her 5x5 pen that we built for her in the living room, where we spend most of our time. I tell her to "go potty", but she normally barks at me that she wants to play. I am trying to leave her in there until she makes potty, but this morning I did not want her to wake up DH. I took her out of the pen and she made right away on the carpet After she makes I try to get her to eat her food. She is a nibbler and we leave food for her all day, so sometimes she eats and sometimes she doesn't. Then I play with her and look for signs that she wants to make potty. I leave at 7:30. DH plays/watchs her until 8:45. I come home to play with her for a half hour at lunch. She typically has already made on her pad, which is to be expected since she is only 2 mos old. Then I come home at 6:30 for the rest of the night when we feed and play with her.

My main question is how often should we leave her in her pen when we are home vs. taking her out to play. The vet says to leave her in the pen most of the time until she is 100% successful with the pad, but I feel bad when I am in the kitchen or on the couch knowing that she has been home alone all day. However, when I bring her in the kitchen and she has an accident, I think it is my fault since she can't get back to her pad. We have a pad in the kitchen too, but I don't know if this just confuses her.

I live in NYC and I can't take her outside until she is fully vaccinated at 16wks, so that is not an option. Has anyone had luck with pad training in two rooms?

Any advice would greatly appreciated!

Message edited 9/13/2007 8:45:07 AM.

Re: Please help a new puppy mommy

First of all congrats on being a new puppy mommy! I'm three times a puppy mommy, our newest addition is 4 mths old!

In the morning as soon as she comes out of the crate I would immediately bring her outside to potty. Once she potties, reward her and praise her.

Feed her, play for a few minutes, then outside again till she potties.
Then crate her when you leave.
When you are home I would leave her out of the pen to play with you and spend time with you. The only time I would keep her in the pen or crate is when you can't watch her.

We have been bringing our pup outside since day one and I am grateful for my other dogs who model what to do, like going to the back door when its time to go out. She just recently started sitting by the back door to go out. As expected once and a while she was have a pee accident, but its becoming rare. We have just been very consistant with her and patient.

Good Luck with your pup!

Re: Please help a new puppy mommy

I agree, as soon as you wake up in the morning take her outside to go to te bathroom. EVen though she does not have all her shots as long as she doesn't eat anything from the ground she should be fine. If you want to 100% wee wee pad train her they sell this spray i think in petco, you can spray it on the pad and the scent attracts the dogs to the pad. I have never acually usd this method so i can't tell you if it works or not. I guess it really depends on the dog. Good luck with your new baby

Re: Please help a new puppy mommy

Thank you! Unfortunately, the vet truly advises not to take the puppy outside. There are too many germs/dogs in NYC So we are only using a pad for now, however I am concerned that there is not enough consistency.

When do you use treats? We have not given her any treats yet... I am not quite sure if we should reward her after going potty. Any suggestions on when to use treats?

Re: Please help a new puppy mommy

We didn't use pads with Katie. I would bring her outside and point and say go pottie. It took her a while to understand what that meant but everytime she did something she would get a treat and a ton of praise.
I would bring her out 1st thing in the morning, when I came home at lunch, after any playing or eatting and before bed. She still goes potty on command. She took a long time to housebreak though. I've heard this is common with Jack Russells.

ETA: Treats work wonders!!! We give her Old Mother Hubbard bitz. They are small so she can have them throughout the day.

Message edited 9/13/2007 9:10:32 AM.

Re: Please help a new puppy mommy

My vet told me: Never YELL at the puppy when he makes a puddle, i know its hard, but he said just wipe it up and go on.. But when you take him/her outside and they go-- celebrate, jump up and down likes they just did the best thing in the world, and treat them.. It sounds funny but it worked. When you yell at them badly in the house, they get scared and submissive which can cause them to do it more b/c they think there doing the right thing by saying "your the boss, see i peed, i give up"...

Just have patience for the little guy, just like a child and the toilet training--it all works out in time.. GOOD LUCK...

Re: Please help a new puppy mommy

We had similiar issues with Daisy, and we're all still learning.

We got Daisy when she was 7 weeks old and crate trained her right away.

Our vet said the same thing - no outside until rabies vaccination, but he said it was fine for the 5-10 min it takes for her to do their business as long as it's the same area all the time.

So, when we wake up in the morning, we take her out right away. She does both numbers, and we bring her in to feed her breakfast. If she doesn't touch it in 20 min, it gets taken away for 10 min. We put it back down and try to get her to eat and she's learned now to eat her bowl of food the first time around.

About 20-30 min after the dog finishes eating, we take them back out to do both their businesses. Usually before we take her out, we play fetch with her in the kitchen and get her active cause this seems to help her go right away outside when we take her.

Shortly, thereafter, we place her in her crate with 3 toys (1 nylabone, 1 sling shot nylabone and her kong with a treat) when we leave for work. We come home at lunch to feed her and let her out to run around.

When Daisy has accidents in the house - we take her outside right away, to show her where she's supposed to do her business. If we're unable to do that for some reason, we put her face towards the accident and say "NO!" about 2-3 times and then place the leash on her to kepe her away from the spot while the Nature's Miracle goes to action on the spot to eliminate the odor, etc.

I saw in your post that you leave food out all day for your puppy - our vet recommended we don't do this, b/c then the dog will eat whenever it wants instead of when you want it to.

Dogs like schedules and it helps them get everything straight and into a routine since they're in a new environment.

Re: Please help a new puppy mommy

Posted by KvsGrl

Thank you! Unfortunately, the vet truly advises not to take the puppy outside. There are too many germs/dogs in NYC So we are only using a pad for now, however I am concerned that there is not enough consistency.

When do you use treats? We have not given her any treats yet... I am not quite sure if we should reward her after going potty. Any suggestions on when to use treats?

Message edited 9/13/2007 5:30:02 PM.

Re: Please help a new puppy mommy

I am definately no expert. Iggy is our first dog and we've had him for exactly 2 weeks. But I'll let you know what worked for us. We were lucky because DH was off for a week when we got him and I work nights. So someone is able to be with him all the time.
The advice that I have to give is to watch him very closely and whenever he starts sniffing around, immediately bring him to the wee wee pad and keep putting him back until he goes. Follow your instincts on when you think he needs to go.
We keep him in the crate at night and he wakes us up at 6/6:30 to go to the bathroom and eat. We put him back in the crate, and he wakes back up at 8:30/9:00
He's great now. It took about a week for him to totally get it. He always poopoos on the pad and has maybe 1 pee pee accident a day. ( i cant believe im using these words ). He goes to the weewee pad on his own.
We can let him run free in the house without worrying now. But before, we crated him in the day for the max of 3 hours at a time (the rule is his age in months plus 1). When we let him out, we immediately brought him to the pad and kept putting him back until he went.

They say small dogs are hard to train, and we did it in a week. so I guess we really lucked out. (He's a 2 lb chihuahua/poodle mix)
I hope this helps you somewhat.

ETA - he's 2 months old

Message edited 9/14/2007 3:11:36 AM.