Yet another toilet training question...!

[Mexx]

Hi all,

We have a 12 week old cocker at home called Holly. We appear to be having some difficulty with toilet training her. I have read as many of the useful posts throughout the forum and have tried many of the solutions found but none alas seem to do the trick.

The problem is two fold. She is continuing to soil her crate overnight and we have tried all kinds of suggested methods to stop this. The second problem is when she is taken into the garden to do her business, she just runs around playing, sniffing etc. I do not encourage play until she has been (on occasion) after which she is praised. After some time and no results, we take her back in where at some point later she unleashes the backlog!

I've read/been told that dogs will not soil their beds at it is instinct not to, however, I think I may have found the exception 
I've also been told to give it time but getting up at 4am to bath her and change her bedding is tiring work!

If anyone has some suggestions we may not have come across please fire away... all help welcomed... please!

Many thanks.

[skyesmum]

Hello Holly's mummy!

i'm Gill.  I have Skye (will be 2 in March) and puppy Ruaidh (Rua) who is 14 weeks old today.  Mine are both show cockers.

Back to the business of wee wee's!

I amn't bothering with newspspers and all that malarky - I just let her out every 20 mins or so and say 'hurry up' and she does what she has to do.  We have had a couple of accidents - but I think we are getting there....

As for the overnight thing..........you'll probably hate my suggestion, but if she is soiling at around the same time every night, say 4am, I would try to pre-empt her and set an alarm for 3:50 - take her out and stay with her in the garden until she has done a poo.  Then completely over praise her and tell her how clever she is!  I reckon you'll only have to do this for a VERY short while and then she'll get the hang of it.  And they are so worth it!   

Good luck!

[bibathediva]

She is still very young and still early days and so will not be able to hold it overnight...there is no shortcut I'm afraid  just time...patience and the chance for her bladder and bowels to gain control 
Do you use a cue word when taking her out like "go wee".."be quick" whatever you wish to use and when she has done her wee/poo i would also give her a small treat and praise her to begin with..you must take the treats out with you so she gets one immediately 
As for the night time you can either get up with her at set times to take her out...or put paper at one end of the crate (although the crate has to be big enough to accommodate this) ...if they have no where else to go dogs will soil there beds 

[amanda9586]

Ohhh I so feel for you.  It seemed when Poppy was a puppy that everyone else's dogs used to go all through the night from a very young age.  Poppy was not in a crate but in a small area with her bed etc and papers down.  She would go on the paper and then proceed to walk in it untill we came down to clear her up    I can tell you there were times when we wondered what on earth had we done! and I became very good at waking up at the first sound of the paper crinkling - even though she was right at the other side of the house 

It does get better but as others have posted she is very young and some dogs get it very quickly and others just take more time. 

Poppy was the same outside as well wanting to sniff everything and then come back inside and wee on her bed    never understood that one - we fenced off an "unexciting" area of the garden and used to put her in there to go to the toilet and again use the "hurry up" command to get her to go.  (still do that now!).  It seemed to take forever to toilet train Poppy - but at 18 months old now it seems like a lifetime ago as well so it will pass!

Good luck - keep up the good work it will sink in eventually.

Amanda & Poppy x

[waggytails]

We have a baby monitor so we can here Hattie when she wakes and take her out, must admit it was really tiring getting up at silly hours but after a while she started to go longer.  I think she was around 4 months old when she started to go through the night.  I do get up around 6am and let the dogs out and feed them and then back to bed.

[Mexx]

WOW! Thanks for all the posts! 
I think you all could be right and we are expecting too much for such a young puppy. We do use a key phrase which is "go wee wee's" just as we take her out. I also have been thinking we are going to have to do the silly o'clock poo outing to the garden. I did notice this morning we only missed her soiling the crate by minutes (we heard her whining but I couldn't get dressed and downstairs quick enough to let her out).

Her crate is a good size so tonight I'm going to try a litter tray with news paper at one end, bed at the other but as Amanda pointed out, they have the lovely habit of walking right through it! 

Other than the toilet stuff she is bright as a button and giving us the run-a-round, which is highly entertaining and we are loving every minute of it!!!

Thanks again all...

[tigs71]

Hi Mexx & Holly

Thought I would add my experience so far.  We have Mason and he is 4½ months old now.  The first night he spent in his crate he messed in it so we bought a divider and made the crate a third of its size to begin with.  We read that the reason he had messed was probably because he had plenty (too much) room so had an area to mess and an area to rest.  From the very beginning we set an alarm and got up with him but we worked backwards with the timings.  Breakfast is at 7.30am so after a late night wee stop we started getting up at say 3.30 - 4.00am, did this for a few days and then made it 15 minutes earlier and increased the time we left him gradually.  Now I let him out at 11pm and he goes right thru to breakfast    It is hard work getting up in the night but if it's just for a quick toilet visit you are back to bed within minutes with no mess to clear up which takes ages and wakes everyone up.  We also increased the size available to him in his crate over this time and we have now removed the divider completely.

He is of course still having little accidents on the floors but we are finding that we can leave him for an hour or so in the kitchen with no mess so he is getting there.  Outside he pretty much go's on cue now "Be Quick" are the words we use and he gets lots of praise each time he goes.  I am sure that he sometimes just adopts the position for the fuss 

Something that my be worth considering before you put a tray inside her crate is that you may be giving her mixed messages.  By doing so you are letting her know that it is OK to do her business inside the crate and of course you are working towards the opposite.

Good luck with Holly