Hello! I just got my new 8 week bundle of joy last weekend love him dearly. I have had Labs all my life and would never be happy with any other breed. However, my previous labs were outdoors so having to house train this one one has been a whole new world! I've read TONS of stuff on line and have tried to implement most of the suggestions. There are so many opinions out there that it was hard to decide which "method" I was going for. My breeder says she just puts a puppy pen around the crate at night and doesn't take them out. But I've heard that only teaches them to potty inside. So I've been taking him out about every 3 hours at night and about 2-3 hours during the day and watch him like a hawk when he is not crated, and even then he is never off leash. I never realized how draining this can all be over time and I wonder if I'm really teaching him anything since I take him out so often to "set him up for success" as one person put it. I carry him out to his spot and most of the time he takes care of business and we go back inside. But long term I'm not sure what the steps are. How will I know when I can stop carrying him outside? I have to go down 3 flights of stairs to get him outdoors so I'm hoping I can get him to walk on his own soon without peeing on the way out. Right now I crate him in a smaller crate at night beside my bed and put him in a XL crate in the day that is filled with toys, etc. So far he has not went potty in either. He is never allowed to roam free and is always on a leash if he is outside the crate. I guess you can say I'm doing the "tether training" method. But where do I go from here? How do I start expanding his "crate" so he sees the whole house as his crate? We don't have many small rooms we can easily gate off and most of the rooms have cords and such that I'm sure he would chew on. Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks!
Hi there and welcome to the forum! I guess the stairs are your biggest challenge. You don't want him running up or down the stairs at this stage as it puts a strain on developing joints. You will be best carrying him for as long as you can manage. I would think there are others with more experience of upstairs living who could advise better, but slowly expanding time between potty trips would be good for starters.its definitely good he has kept his crates clean. Using puppy pads MIGHT be an option?
If you crate him in a relatively small crate at night he will try to avoid soiling it. With a little luck he will let you know when he needs to go out. I think we only had to get up in the middle of the night and early in the morning for a couple of weeks with Tilly and Cooper. It did not seem to take too long to grow into a 6 or 7 hr bladder. We encouraged our pups to do stairs as soon as they could, but it took several weeks before they could negotiate them at all, and longer than that before we wanted to let them go up or down the stairs to go potty. We kept the pups in the kitchen during the day, with a baby gate at the door to the rest of the house. We also had a pen in the kitchen and tried to keep them in the pen if we weren't actually watching them. FWIW our house is on two levels. with the back yard on the lower level. We could get the pups out the front door quicker than going down the stairs to the back yard, but we tried to guide them to the back yard (and dog door) as soon as we could . Our ski cabin is three floors and no dog door. Any time the dogs are up there we have to take them out. Generally they could (can) always go through the night, but occasionally we will be wakened by a dog that needs to go out. We never used puppy pads, and it seems counter productive to me. On the other hand we have a dog door to the back yard, so as soon as they were well into house training we would let them go outside with us, and once they were pretty reliable they were on their own as far as going outside. There were occasional accidents, but not many by 5 month old.
Hello We used a crate and took Jessie out during the day every 20 mins to start with and every 3 hours at night. Which was pretty full on, but did work! She wasn't crated all the time, but had free access to the kitchen if I was there to watch her. If I couln't watch her she was crated. We had a few accidents along the way, but this intensity didn't last long. I think we stopped getting up in the middle of the night after a couple of weeks. She toilet trained pretty quickly with this technique I think we were more or less there by 16 weeks. We have been fairly slow to let her into the rest of the house, but mainly to give our cat some peace. At 5 months she was gradually introduced to the rest of the house, but supervised. We had one accident, but after that was fine. Hope this helps. I think other people on here have used pen and puppy pads to good effect. I don't think there is a right or wrong, just what works for you. Good luck. X
Hi and welcome. Juno slept beside me in her crate for the first few weeks so I used to wake when she started fidgeting, so it was a trip to the garden and then straight back in the crate. The less you interact the easier it is to get the puppy to re-settle. By the time I moved her downstairs to the kitchen she was waking around 6:00 for toileting. During the day we were mainly in the kitchen and entrance hall and i used to take her out after food, play, sleep without fail and every 20 minutes or so in between until I knew that she could longer and then gradually extended the time between. We had very few accidents in the house and they were down to me being caught on the phone when she needed to toilet! She was also allowed into the lounge from day 1 and just used to watch her closer if it had been a while since she had pee'd. As soon as she showed signs of fidgeting or circling I used to scoop her up and take her out. The three flights of stairs are problematical as on ne hand your pup needs to learn how to manage stairs both up and down, but also developing joints need to be protected. I would be carrying the pup up and down for as long as I could safely manage taking into consideration size and weight. How many steps are there in the flights? Is it possible that in a few weeks you could introduce the middle flight, or at least part of it, for going up and down. Early stages of training stairs I had my puppy on lead and kept in front of her to prevent a mad rush and possible accidents. Is there any particular reason why you keep a leash on him all the time?
WEll first of all, THREE flights of stairs, wow, that's a lot. My first puppy did not like to be carried, if I had to carry her up and down that much one fear was she'd get wiggly and I'd drop her. She was small too, didn't get heavy quickly. I am not a fan of puppy pads but in your case I'd use them, me. Or is the floor easily cleaned? I did not plan to allow accidents but I knew they would happen. We put the crate, door open, inside our gated kitchen. When we didn't get to puppy in time he used a piece of floor well away from the crate. The floor was easily cleaned. But, I wonder, do you really need to get up every three hours at night? IS puppy performing at those times? Are you hearing rustling sounds that indicate he really does need to go out? Oban did need out twice a night at first and we'd hear him. But the first puppy was clean overnight from the get go. On the other hand, out every 2 to 3 hours in the daytime seems awfully long between potty breaks. They are more active when awake, they need to go more often when awake (like us) so that seems too long for such a young pup. Sometimes I was out every 15 or 20 minutes if we'd been playing and puppy got all excited and happy. P.S. I agree puppy needs to learn to handle stairs. My breeder said no running up and down stairs to play but up and down as needs be (one or two times a day) was ok. What about setting him down for only part of the last flight, then the whole flight. But not all three?
He does well going up the stairs but hasn't gone down yet. I guess technically it's only 2 flights but since I walk him from our bedroom on the 2nd floor out to the basement it FEELS like 3 flights! lol. So for now I carry him down and out and he walks back up. He started out needing to go every hour but is now up to 2 in a few short days so I'm happy with the progress. I keep him on a leash so he doesn't run off and wee somewhere. I was aiming to have complete supervision to avoid all accidents but now I'm starting to remove his collar and leash for short periods of time after he goes to potty to give him some freedom. So far there hasn't been any accidents but I'm sure they will come. There isn't an easy way to gate off many rooms others use like the kitchen so we'll probably have to figure something else out. I usually put him to bed at midnight and he whimpers to go out around 3-3:30 and pees, poops, or both! I don't feed him after 6 and his last water is around 9. Last night he slept from midnight to 6:15 and he didn't pee in his crate so I'm not sure what happened but I hope it continues! Thanks for your input!
