Hi guys, I need some advice on a indoor doggy toilet for my puppy… We plan to have a designated toilet area outside (while we are home). This toilet area is mostly sand and gravel at the moment. We also need to have an indoor doggy toilet, which will be in the puppy play pen, which will be used when we are not at home. After reading Ian Dumbar’s book, “Before you get a puppy”, he suggested something along the lines of “equip a litter box with what will be the dog's eventual toilet material”. With this in mind, if we plan use a combination of inside and outside toilet areas, would it be a good idea to fill his little box with the sand/gravel which we plan to use for his outside toilet area? Any suggestions? Cheers, Robbie
Re: Indoor puppy toilet I'd probably just go with newspaper You can chuck it out easily. I think that sand or gravel would be messier, and he might dig in it. Zulu will learn to wee and poo on both the indoor surface and the outdoor surface. We used newspaper with our first dog when he was a puppy (long time ago). He was left in our laundry when we had to go out and he quickly learned to pee/poo on the newspaper only. We at first covered the whole laundry floor in newspaper and he chose an area to wee in. We then reduced the area of newspaper gradually, centred on his chosen area. Pretty quickly we got it down to one tabloid sized square and he went there only. He didn't develop any toilet training problems as a result of being allowed to toilet in an indoor area (he did have the odd accident as an adult but that was more as a result of eating things he shouldn't, like a tonne of plums off our plum tree....).
Re: Indoor puppy toilet I went with newspaper too - only thing is puppy would rip it up. He was on tile floor with washable doormats so it didn't much matter. I think Ian Dunbar's advice is the ideal, maybe a tad impractical though (I find that sometimes with that author, but the advice is generally ver, very, good) but I would stay away from gravel (pups will eat stuff!) and even sand might be very messy (digging opportunities!).
Re: Indoor puppy toilet I think tabloid newspapers are just perfect ;D They do risk getting ripped up and you might need to speak nicely to friends or raid paper bins as you are going to get through an awful lot of them!
Re: Indoor puppy toilet I want to make it absolutely clear that I do not read tabloid newspapers. I meant tabloid sized, which can be achieved if one folds a broadsheet in half.
Re: Indoor puppy toilet Free evening newspaper in London (tabloid!) - did my bit to keep the tube tidy on the way home from work!
Re: Indoor puppy toilet Here is my boy in the Ian Dunbar long term confinement pen arrangement - newspaper/puppy pads to the right of the pic, bed/crate to the left (out of shot), kongs all over the floor.... Ah....exciting times for Robbie! 1 Day 1 - Charlie arrives mid April by JulieTandCharlie, on Flickr
Re: Indoor puppy toilet That is such an utterly adorable picture of Charlie, Julie - I missed out on tiny Charlie, as it was before I joined the forum. *sigh* He started out gorgeous - no wonder he's so gorgeous now! Clare
Re: Indoor puppy toilet Ah, thanks! Note the first thing he did was jump up on the bars of his pen! Early training for the champ counter surfer he later became...
Re: Indoor puppy toilet oh what a gorgeous photo! Beautiful boy, haven't seen one of charlie as a pup
Re: Indoor puppy toilet Aww, gorgeous! The colour, the eyes, the ears!! Cadbury's could have built a whole advertising campaign around him ;D ;D
Re: Indoor puppy toilet I remember a vet on a TV programme some years ago saying that the Financial Times was best for dog toilet purposes. He reckoned the pink dye made it more absorbent. My first piece of odd info of the day
