Hey guys,

I need your help with my 7.5 week old puppy, Niko. He obviously understands what the training pad is for, as he will often walk over to it and pee on it. However, he's been doing that for about a week and a half now, and every so often he will still just randomly pee in the middle of the floor somewhere else. If he knows where he's supposed to pee on the pad, why won't he always pee there? At his age, shouldn't he be able to recognize fairly quickly where he is and isn't supposed to pee?

Our other issue is in the garage, where he stays while we're at work and while we're sleeping. He poops and pee's all over the garage. We're going to rinse out the entire garage and use bleach to try and clean up the smells, but do you have ideas of training him in there to use the pad? Do we need to spend time in the garage with him, or just be patient while he learns how to use the training pad in the house?

We do have a crate for him which he sleeps in, but is there a point to train him inside of it if he's so young that he can't hold it very long anyways?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Absolutely crate train. He does have some ability to hold it, and if the crate is small enough most dogs will not potty where they sleep. Make sure you have a divider in the crate if its a larger one, so that he only had enough room to stand up, turn around, and sleep comfortably.

As far as the pee pads go, we never really use the pads, but accidents are going to happen with very little puppies. Ghost got the concept very quickly as well, but they have a tendency to get distracted when they're playing or something, and not realize they have to potty. Keep doing what you're doing, but I'd suggest doing away with the pee pads and just focusing on taking him outside. We were taking Ghost out as often as every 15 minutes at first, and always take him out as soon as he wakes up, finishes eating, or has played for a few minutes.

Good luck, and welcome to the forum!

Since he's so very young you're going to need to get up a few times a night to let the little guy out to go to the bathroom. I'm sure the garage area is much too big of a space which is why he uses it as his own bathroom. I'd highly recommend using the crate to housebreak him especially if he has no issue being in it.

With the crate you're going to put him in there at night but you need to get up throughout the night to let him out to use the bathroom. Once he goes outside give him some praise and back in the crate he goes. The point of it is to help him develop some bladder control as well as not treat your garage (or any other part of your house) as a toilet.

Personally I don't like puppy pads. I think anything that promotes using the bathroom inside the house is a step backwards.


As Meredith said- after they play, eat, sleep, whatever they're going to need to be brought outside to go potty.

Thank you both so much for the responses. As for getting up in the middle night, not exactly what I wanted to hear The first week we had him, he stayed in our room and i had to get up multiple times in the middle of the night...that was NOT a good week for me. Would it be totally wrong of me to wait until he was a little older and had more bladder control before starting the crate training so I wouldn't lose out on so much sleep (and my wife wouldn't be absolutely miserable with me)?

We got a large crate with a divider so we can make it smaller if need be, however the bed we got for him takes up the entire crate. He has never had any accidents in his bed, so do you think if we just put him in his crate with his large bed, he wouldn't spoil it?

kcdrumrunner wrote:

Would it be totally wrong of me to wait until he was a little older and had more bladder control before starting the crate training so I wouldn't lose out on so much sleep (and my wife wouldn't be absolutely miserable with me)?
...

He has never had any accidents in his bed, so do you think if we just put him in his crate with his large bed, he wouldn't spoil it?

For the first question there, yes. You would be allowing bad habits to form and it's going to make potty training a royal pain in the ass in the long run. The earlier you make that impression, the easier it's going to be. You also have a VERY young puppy on your hands and he may have some issues from being taken from his littermates too early. Really, they shouldn't be taken away before 8 weeks, but that's for another discussion. I know it's hard, but you're going to have to sacrifice a little sleep for 2-3 weeks. By the time he's 10-11 weeks old, he should be able to go most if not all of the night without needing to go out. When we first had Ghost, she was getting us up 2-3 times a night, and by us I mean me. My fiance sleeps like a rock, so I was getting up. I fly high performance airplanes for a living, so sleep is crucial for me, yet I was willing to do it. Sorry if I come off as being harsh, but a puppy is a lot of responsibility and if you don't do things right it's going to be WAY harder for you in the long run. We just want to make sure you don't wind up going insane trying to raise a puppy There were definitely days with Ghost that my fiance and I were like "what the hell have we done?". Like I said, the lack of sleep will probably only last a few weeks, and in the meantime coffee helps

For your other question, you're taking a big risk if you do that. We were lucky with Ghost that we never had to use the divider, but most puppies will mess in their beds if you give them too much space. You can give it a try and see how he does with it, but be prepared to clean up some messes.

Best of luck with the potty training, you will get through it. We are all glad you found the forum, and I'll be the first to say if I hadn't had the fantastic support, I probably wouldn't have survived the first month with a Husky puppy.