Our puppy Cadance is 12 weeks old today, and is - mostly - house trained.
We just got her on Thursday.

If we take her outside about every 3 hours, she's pretty good.
But once in a while, she will have a piddle when its only been like 1 hour.
I take her outside immediately, just for reinforcement and she will actually pee some more.

Last night we were playing in the living room and she went over and scratched at the back door to the yard!
It was great, but another one of those 'less than a hour' incidents. I scrambled to get my boots on and at least part-way bundled. While I was falling over putting my boots on, she went over to the front door and scratched, then piddled. I took her out anyways, I was just excited she scratched at the door.
She peed more outside. This snow and low temps suck for house-training!

Also - overnight - in the morning she cries to go out, but once she's up, she's up!

The first night we set up a crate in our bedroom and she went right in, slept for 6 hours without a peep.. then cried up a storm at 5am lol. Half-awake, I tried to tell her to go back to sleep, but got up at her insistence and took her out, she promptly did 1 and 2 outside.

The 2nd night, she went into the crate but as soon as we turned our backs for bed, she started carrying on something awful! We ignored her, and she was completely silent after about 20 minutes. At 6am she started carrying on, and again I took her out and she did 1 & 2.

We are borrowing the crate, we do eventually want her to sleep on the floor, or the bed is open to her - which is a first for my fiance to let a dog in the bed.

We brought her to the store to get some extras for her. (she got swarmed by her adoring public btw lol) We were going to get her a pad or etc. for the crate but decided she might not fit in the crate for long, and those things were pricey. We played around with the idea of getting her a bed, and pulled one off a shelf to inspect it. Cadance immediately stopped her constant sniffing and plopped down on it! That particular bed was 2x her size and on sale for $30, so we decided to get it.

I am not a cold-compliant person, I get frozen easily and have asthma. My fiance is the cold freak, he's always warm. We sleep with a space heater and often bicker over the settings lol. I worry about her getting warm, but to make matters more interesting, I also have a pair of Hairless rats to keep warm.

We removed a bookshelf from one corner of our bedroom, the most cool corner where both the walls are exterior. We put her new bed there and she loved it! She just hung out there for about an hour. When it came for bed time, I took a kid gate we have and was able to close off that corner of the room after clearing it of any puppy hazards - cords etc so we could sleep without worry.
She has a floor space that is about 5x her size. She is able to reach the foot of our bed, and so far puts her head on the edge to complain lol. She happily plopped on her bed and chewed her antler. But as soon as the lights were out and we were drifting off, she started the crying and moaning like the previous night, I actually regretted it for a moment because she grabbed the end of the blanket once, catching my toes in the process! We ignored her and she gave up after about 15 minutes. She got up to complain a few times throughout the night, I would sit up, tell her "No, bed." and point to her bed, and she would listen! I was impressed, but so sleepy.

At 6:45 this morning, she started being persistent, so I got up and took her out, -2 degrees out, ouch lol. She did her business and then wanted to play play play!

Questions:

* How do I tell if she is crying for a potty break, or crying because she wants us up to play, not sleep! - I do not want to scold her for letting us know she really has to go, but I don't want to reward the crying by setting her free if not.

* Are we doing well so far, is she on track for a 11-12 week old?

*Should she be able to hold it longer than 5-6 hours? Once I'm up, i'm up as well, so I've been very drowsy the past couple days lol.

* What could I do about the occasional unpredictable piddle?

* Any other comments / suggestions?

With puppies, the general rule of thumb is 1hr per month of age that they can last without needing to potty. For a 3 month old puppy, you're looking at 3 hrs. Of course that time is cut shorter if they're running around and playing, drinking, or eating. So her having to use the bathroom after only an hour and playing is totally normal. So 5-6 hours is pretty long.

For overnight, you'll essentially have to get used to getting up overnight for the first few months. We stopped having to get up in the middle of the night for Cheyenne when she was about 5/6 months old. She could usually last until my ex got out of bed in the morning for work at 7am.

With the crating... While I'm sure you want her to sleep with you or loose... Getting her used to the crate now is the best idea. Having a Siberian who isn't crate trained when it comes down to the tough ages of "adolescence" is going to make you kick yourself for it. They can and usually do become quite destructive during that phase. If this is your first Husky, I would highly suggest continuing to utilize the crate.

When I was housebreaking mine, if they cried in the middle of the night after they had previously fallen asleep I would get up and take them out but make sure to not make a big fuss of it. I wasn't going to have this become some game. They got taken out, were told to potty, and given 5-10 minutes. If nothing happened, or they were being silly... back into the crate. It took only maybe 3 trips of "funny business" before they realized they either needed to go back to sleep or they actually did need to go potty.