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10 week old puppy, iron bladder and bowels!

Zumie05

Well-known member
Ok, I am having problems with potty training; only VERY minor though. I was looking for some advice to fine tune my program.

My 10 week old puppy will always go potty outside. She is very good at it. In fact, she will ONLY poop outside.

I am amazed at the fact that thus far she only poos once, or twice a day, and she can hold her pee for hours. To my understanding, I thought pups would go poo pretty much right after they eat, and pee right after they drink!

The reason why I know she can hold it so long is because I would also like to cross train her to potty pads. My ultimate plan is to not keep the pads indoors, but to eventually have a potty area out on my enclosed deck so I can let her out to do business from my home rather than leash her up to go out into our unfenced yard (for those lazy days :p)

The potty pad training is tough. We have not had a single "full on" accident, meaning every time I have caught her pottying in the house, I was able to quickly get her to a pad. One time, she did pee on the pad and got 100% on it! Today I had her inside a pen, half with her food, toys, and bed, the other half all pads. She peed on her bed? I was very confused as to why she did this. All the time we had her so far, she has been sleeping, chewing her bones, and playing with her toys on her bed. I am not sure why she thought that was the right place to go. And her pen was just a regular puppy exercise pen, nothing very large. Because of this incident, I did make her bed area smaller, and pad area larger, hoping this will help her make the right choice next time.

Also, at night, around 3am so far we wake up and put her on a pad, then she pees immediately. Last night, she would not. I put her on the pad at 3am, and 5am, and she did not want to go. Then come to find in the morning she had peed in her bed.

Currently, today I have experimented a bit. I have only taken her outside once. She pooped and peed. Now it has been 10 hours. She has drank, and had 2 meals since. No pee, or poo. I am regularly putting her on a pad. I am baffled, and confused? SHe is not whining or pacing at all and seems fine and playful, perky and happy.

Any tips? I could just only take her outside, which for the most part I have been with no problems, but again I really want to get this potty pad thing worked out!
 
My boy refused to ever use pads, he would go ANYWHERE else, though. You might try changing to a more "outdoorsy" style of potty, you can grow sod in a tray, or if you google "dog indoor potty" there are several brands to choose from. Having real grass available may make more sense to a puppy than using pads.

Guinness seemed to go through a phase of preferring to pee on his blanket or bed than outside. He would stop playing, run over and pee in the middle of his blanket, it never made sense but I think it's fairly common.
 
Sophie peed in her crate, on her bedding, until I removed ALL the bedding. When she had to sleep on the hard plastic, she knew there was nothing to absorb the pee so she stayed dry.

Perhaps your dog is confusing pee pads with bedding? I have never used pee pads.
 
even to this day, if you leave bentley who has jus turned 2 with his bed he will pee on it :rolleyes: thus i have given up lettin him have a bed. he has the whole run of our house and as long as there is no dog bed there will be no peeing. odd ball that he is!!! he spends his days snoozing on our bed anyway and i swear this was his ploy all along as he knows i wouldnt just let im have nothing to sleep on :rolleyes: xx
 
I guess first point is that maybe there's some confusing thinking about where she actually is on the housetraining spectrum expressed in how you are describing her, and that might be contributing to some of the training issues or assumptions about what she is doing and why? :) From your description, she is actually not always going outside to potty -- if she is going in her bed and indoors on pee pads then she isn't housetrained to go outdoors and actually isn't housetrained (why she is going on her bed... :) ). Peeing on bedding is really common -- and one reason a lot of trainers really discourage using pee pads or newspapers as potty areas in the process of housetraining. Better to train her to actually what you want her to do -- always take her out, and have the area of the deck set up as you expect to for her lifetime. As suggested, some of the outdoor fake grass potty trays or using turf in a tray is a better option I think for the deck area.

10 weeks is only a baby and it is pretty unlikely she is holding herself for 10 hours. It is more likely that she is doing small pees indoors that you are not spotting -- female puppies in particular of this small breed can do small unnoticeable pees in a second or two and very often people miss these for months then suddenly discover a housetraining 'accident' and only gradually realise the dog has been peeing behind the sofa or on a dog bed for weeks/months. If you are not watching her constantly -- as in NEVER taking an eye off her -- I think it likely she has been peeing unnoticed.

I'd follow Dr Ian Dunbar's recommendations for housetraining which are on www.dogstardaily.com and included in his free book download there, After You Get Your Puppy.

Removing all bedding does help with bed-pee-ers. Puppies so young are really way too small, untrained and young to know the difference between a bed and a carpet, floor or lawn for peeing. Expect peeing in your sofa and mattresses too as she grows up -- i think we have all been there on the dog pee housetraining express at some point! Constant supervision and regular trips out with rewards, outside, is the single best approach to move slowly (and it WILL be s-l-o-w-l-y!!) towards reliability.
 
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