UGH, potty training!

[tupelogirl]

We have a new puppy currently about 12 weeks old that we've had for a month now. She seems pretty well-rounded and good natured but I'm having concerns regarding her house-training. We fully intended to crate train her when we got her, but a few things have happened that caused us to make some changes, the biggest of which was that she kept pooping in her crate every night not letting us know that she had to go in anyway so we'd wake up every morning to a messy puppy that needed a full bath. Not fun when I have to get myself ready for work and would rather spend that time playing or exercising with her! So, she now has a small area near our backdoor that is babygated for her. Her crate is in there too and she'll go in there to chew on toys or rest for a bit but generally, she sleeps outside the crate on the floor. We have been putting down newspaper and she goes on that in the middle of the night as well as sometimes during the day when we aren't home. She is also very good about going outside when we take her out - she always goes on her prompt and get a treat.

So basically, these are my concerns right now:
1. Are we confusing her with the newspaper and going outside as well? If we are home and ever catch her trying to go, we immediately take her out, but obviously there are times when we aren't there that she goes on the newspaper.
2. Should we give crate training another try? At this point she really does not like to be locked into her crate that much. She is happy when she is traveling in it but when we are home she goes crazy. I'm also afraid she will continue to soil in there.
3. Lastly, she goes to the bathroom a LOT! She poops at least 10+ times a day. Sometimes when she is going outside she will pee in 3 different spots and poo in 2 more totaling about 5 treats. This has always been the way she goes and I don't know if that is normal. Is she learning that the more she squats, the more treats she gets?

I'd appreciate any advice or tips people might have and specifically stories about how you trained your puppy and what worked. This is my first puppy, but not my husbands although I think he was too young to remember how his family trained theirs. We have read lots of books and we are being patient so I don't mind if this is how it goes. I just don't want to be using a method that is confusing her.
Thanks!

[charliezangel]

We just got our first puppy. DH has had a dog as well, so have I but I have never raised one (i only had them as a child and really didn't have any responsibilities). She is a 9 wk old jack russell terrier.

From the first day we brought her home we've had her on a leash. She knows exactly where it is and has started running over to it when she has to potty. We also have a piddle pad in the halway between the office and the bedroom. If we catch her going potty, we pick her up and put her on the piddle pad. If i see poop in the house, i put it on the piddle pad and show her. I don't shove her nose in it, but i let her know it's supposed to go there. I don't think it's confusing at all because she doesn't really use the piddle pad anymore (we've had her for almost a week and i have had this pad out for almost 2 days now). The whole point is to show her that if she can't hold it, there is a place for it. She's just too young to and rambunctious to know when she has to go all the time.

She knows as soon as i get home from work that we are going out for a walk. I put the harness on her and we go straight out. She does her business, and then we come in. She also knows to wake us up if she has to go at night (she sleeps in bed with us, a mistake i think, lol.). She will lick my face till i get up and then runs right for the leash. She's very good and the training has been a lot easier than i thought.

[mjfish]

Your puppy is still a baby, so don't expect a lot from her just yet. Typically, the number of months old the dog is is the number of hours they can "hold it". So, in your case, your girl is 3 mos old, so she should be able to hold it for approximately 3 hours. Every dog is different though, so it might take a little longer for her to get there. Be patient.

People who use crates will usually adjust their schedules to meet the dogs needs, so unless you or your DH can come home from work, I would say allowing her to use newspaper is preferable to making her sit in her own pee and poop for hours. If you can adjust your schedules or have someone come let her out for you a couple of times during the day, then I would say don't use the newpapers. Same goes at night -- set your alarm to wake yourself up at least once during the night -- don't expect her to alert you at this point. When we got our last puppy, our schedule looked something like this:

Let our last time before work at 7 - 7:30ish
I or DH home at around 10 - 10:30ish to let out
I or DH home at around 1 - 1:30ish to let out
I came home from work usually around 4:30ish or sometimes DH would be home

Fed 2x a day (AM & PM), last feeding at around 6 or so (letting them out not too long after they've eaten is usually a good bet). Cut off access to water at around 9. Let out for last time at night 10 - 10:30ish (of course we let him out multiple time during the evening and took him on walks then too). I would set the alarm for around 1:30 to let him out in the middle of the night, and then he would OK until about 5:30 - 6 in the morning.

We adopted him when he was 12 weeks old, and we pretty much had a few months of this schedule...he took a little longer to be able to hold it. Even with that schedule, he still had "accidents" in his cage. He is a quiet dog, so his alert was a little whine at most...you may have to teach her to ring a bell on her cage or something if she is quiet.

As far as your poop volume goes, that does sound like a lot. Providing that she's healthy (no bladder/UTI or worms), what kind of food are you feeding? That can make a big difference (literally :p ).

HTH!

[tupelogirl]

Thanks for your responses. I think I was just having a rough day when I wrote this. That and I was getting sick of people telling me how their dogs were completely potty trained in 2 days or a week or some crazy thing.:mad:

We do have someone who comes by every day to let her out, feed her and play with her. I think it's just going to take a lot longer for her to figure everything out. We may try to see if she'll sleep in her crate next to our bed this weekend, but if she likes her spot in the mudroom, that's fine with us too.

I think alot of it might have to do with the food we've been feeding as well. We switched her gradually from the food she'd been eating before we got her to Natural Ultramix, but she never stopped having diarrhea. So then, we had to feed her boiled rice and hamburger until she was more solid and tried to put her back on the Natural Ultramix. Although she liked it, she was still getting the runs :( so we just switched her to Science Diet Puppy because we had a bag in the house from the vet. It's not really what I'd like to feed her but at least she has normal poo now and we've been switching her food since we got her so I'm going to let her eat her Science Diet for now.

Any recommendations on puppy food that's good for your dog and keeps him/her regular??? :D

[mjfish]

Is the Natural Ultramix the Castor & Pollux brand or are you referring to Nutro Ultra?

The Castor & Pollux brand is one of the better ones you can find at PetCo. You could also try Natural Balance or Sensible Choice Natural Blend or Natural Blend Holistic (same formula I'm pretty sure). At PetSmart, you could try Blue (Blue Buffalo Co.)

Puppy and senior formulas are more marketing gimmicks than anything -- if you feed a super premium kibble that is formulated for All Life Stages, then you just feed a little more of that when they are a puppy to support their growth.

Other super premiums to try (but you won't find these at PetCo or PetSmart):
Canidae
Innova, California Natural, Healthwise (all made by same comany)
Timberwolf Organics
Wellness
Flint River Ranch
Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul
Merrick
Nature's Variety Prarie
Life's Abundance
Owen & Mandeville
Fromm's
Azmira

You could possibly be feeding too much, and that's why she has the runs. I would say use the SD since you have it, but I wouldn't keep her on that unless that is the only food that works for her (but I'm guessing you could find something better to fit the bill).

ETA: You can also add some plain canned pumpkin (w/o the spices) or green beans -- they will add fiber to help firm things up.

[jajacobsen]

It's possible that one brand of food just doesn't agree with her system (just like some foods don't agre with certain people), and so she has loose bowel movements. It will be harder to train her while is occurring. What at kind of dog is she? We blend Purina One Large Breed puppy food with Nutro Large Breed puppy food and that works well for our dogs. I would experiment with different dog foods, assuming she has had various vet checks and is worm free. Hookworms can cause diarrhea.

Once you get the poop sorted out things should be much esier, and at 12 weeks, the dog should be able to stick to the schedule you posted, so I work to eliminate the newspapers, as I think they may be confusing the training.

Also, another thing to remember is that many animal have to eliminate 20-40 minutes afer eating. So it is important to make sure you plan an outing around that schedule (mine don't but they are wierd). Are you religious about keeping the same first thing in the morning morning go out time? Literally I would wake up, pull on a robe and take our two out at 5.45am, even before I went myself, because this is how I read to do it. Their last out at night was 10.30 and they could not hold it any longer. As soon as they heard me up in the morning they needed to go ASAP! Think about the window of time before the last outing at night and first outing in the morning.

It can get frustrating but at 20 weeks all will be so much better. Just an FYI - at 10 weeks I thought my two pups were trained. At 12 weeks it seemed like they were going backwards. But by 24 weeks we were good.

Good luck!

[NotDesperate]

I think one thing I would change is when the person comes during the day to take your pup out- don't have them feed him. It would be better if he ate in the am and pm (depending on your schedule) and then you can take them out to poo after that. It may take time, but they will usually always go then.

My pup poos during the day too though now. She will poo after her breakfast and dinner but usually there will still be poo in her exercise pen when I get home from work... Maybe I feed her too much... I have to see how much she weighs to figure out how much to give her now.

P.S. Jajacobson- that is not very encouraging about your dogs going backwards at one point! Eeep! :eek:

[jajacobsen]

Notdesperate: Yeah, it did seem crazy at the time but my mom said that even human children go through phases where they sort of go backwards with potty training. She advised to just stick with the program.

And so I did. I did not love taking them out at 5.45 am every morning (when DH gets up for work) and I stil do not love making sure I wake up at 6am on teh weekends to let them out even now.

I'm not saying this is a fault of the OP, but I do see a lot of other people fall down on the weekends and also not taking the dog out first thing. A dog need religious consistency in the potty training. You can't expect them to be spot on - no mistakes - unless you're willing to be the same with the schedule.

Think about it. A small child cannot hold it while you get dressed and neither can your puppy. A small child needs to go potty on the weekend mornings early and so does your puppy. Now, at 9 months, they can hold it till I pull on clothes (but I am so trained now that I still let them out, and then I go to the bathroom!)

BUT, now they are good as gold. Never an accident. So worth it.

Tupelogirl - What breed is the dog? I know that with weimaraners (and all deep-barrelled dogs, such as labs)were recomended to have 3-4 small meals a day rather than 2 larger ones. They only cut back to two meals a day at 8 months. For this breed, 2-3 meals a day is recommended even for adult dogs to reduce the chance of gastric bloat.

[tupelogirl]

jajacobsen: She's a soft coated wheaten terrier. I know we could probably do fine with just 2 meals a day, but since we do have someone coming over during the day for now, I'd rather give her 3 meals. When we come home from work there is rarely any mess so I don't think the mid-day meal is a problem. We have been feeding her a little less than we were before and this seems to be working well on the poo volume.

I am in the process of switching her back to the Castor and Pollux Ultramix one more time. She is almost off of the Science Diet now and so far so good in the poop arena :D

At this point, her accidents in the house while we are home are pretty rare. But we do wake up to some mess just about every morning. She is still using the newspaper outside her crate. I suspected that she was waking up and going at 5:00 when my DH's first alarm went off in the morning so I snuck downstairs a bit earlier a few days and unfortunately, that wasn't the case. She must go in the middle of the night sometimes and some nights not. We were waking up in the middle of the night to let her out but then she thinks it's playtime and it's hard to get her to go back to sleep, so we're just being patient and letting her sleep through the night. We figure she will be able to hold it eventually.

I do have another question though, not potty related...
Does everyone's dogs go through "crazy puppy moments" and do they outgrow that? Our puppy is usually very good at responding to our commands, but at around 9:00 or 10:00 at night she jseems to get an energy burst and will starts running laps around our house, zooming from one room to the next and under tables, behind couches. It's pretty funny to watch and I think probably really common, but she will not respond to anyone when she's doing it. She won't come, and it's almost impossible to calm her down until she gets it out of her system. She also loves running upstairs which we don't really allow her to do unless she is with one of us. But she'll get halfway up and just look at us. We'll say no and try to call her back at which point, she'll bark, hesitate for several moments and then run the rest of the way up. Tell me this is common? Any tips on how we should react to this?

[jajacobsen]

If you're sure that DH alarm is not waking her and that she is not eliminating first thing in teh morning but rather at some point during the night, then it sounds like you're doing everything right. If she goes on the newspaper sthen it seems as if she has becoem trained to them. She will outgrow this.

Our femle dog definietly used to get a burst of energy betwen 9 and 10 at night, exhibiting te behavior you described. It stopped at soome point, probably at about 6 months and I know now at 10 months she and her brother are sacked out. But they have very active mornigns, we we do on purpose, to make them more settled.

That said, no amount of activity would have slowed Delilah down in the early months. Her brotehr was most active in the morning while she was at night. Same breed, same litter, same age: completely different dogs!