CALA I NEED HELP!! (crate training)

[Cedars]

Hiya,

FLH told me to ask you! My puppy is 16 and a bit weeks old, we've only had her a week, and she's struggling with holding over the night. We're trying to crate train but its not working hugely well, shes doing about two accidents at night (which isnt a huge problem cos I'm not sure they should be able to hold it that long) but she's having numerous accidents in the rest of the house as well.

PLEASE HELP! She's in a huge crate atm because we couldnt afford to buy two, so its for a full size lab. It has bedding over one half, newspaper and cardboard in the other, with all her toys and water.

Any ideas?? Would be eternally grateful!

Hannah xxxx

 

[ridebumble]

can you try and reduce the size of the crate, pups can't physically hold themselves until 20 + weeks for long, does pup sneak off to wee? look for signs ... twriling sniffing etc then out goes puppy .. take out after wakeing, playing, eating, drinking etc...

 

[MurphysMinder]

I've a feeling Cala is on holiday

. The secret to housetraining is spending as much time as possible with pup for the first few weeks. Every time they have eaten, stop playing, wake up etc, take her outside and give the command you are using, and wait until she does something. Then lots of praise and back in, if she starts wandering round sniffing the ground again in a few minutes take her back out again. Don't presume she can't want to go again. You have had her quite late, had her breeders made any attempt to house train her, if not it is going to take a bit longer.
Re the crate, I had a huge crate for my pup, I don't think it helps because as they have space they do not have to worry about soiling their bed. How long are you leaving her at night? My pup used to start whining in the early hours and I went down and took her out. We usually still have at least one wee at night for a while but they do only have little bladders!
Don't get disheartened, some train really easily, others take longer. My latest GSD took the longest of any I had, she was still having occasional accidents at 6/7 months old, but in the main it was because I ignored the signs. She actually needed to go out every half an hour or so in the evening after her tea, not sure why. She is now just a year old and is (fingers crossed) absolutely great, no accidents for months

 

[Rafferoo]

Whilst OH and I could not claim to have a well behaved pooch the one thing we seemed to manage to do successfully was toilet train! We used a crate too and it was quite big for our JRT so she did initially soil the part of the crate without her bed. We then started to get up in the night to take her out and it seemed to do the trick really well. For the first few weeks of owning her we spent more time outside than in. We literally took her out almost every 1/2 hour to 1 hour when we were home and came home as much as possible during the working day to let her out. She seemed realise that poo's and wee's were for outside fairly quickly as a result (although the continual night time visits were somewhat of a drag - especially for me because I sleep like a zombie!). She is now good as gold and asks to go out by looking at us and whining or pacing up and down in front of us giving us meaningful looks!!

Good luck with your pup - I'm sure you'll get there!

 

[Rafferoo]

Just wanted to add we did not take her out every hour at night - just late before bed, once in the night and again v early morning. She stopped messing fairly quickly in the night once we started doing this!

 

[ladyearl]

Agree with rafferoo. She won't be able to go the whole night so make a mid night stop about 3/4hrs after her bed time. Don't fuss with her. Just take her straight out and use your toilet command. If you can put her to bed, do her middle of the night and her early morning toilet at the same time she'll soon get into a routine.

 

[FinnishLapphund]

I'm really sorry Flamehead but I'm so used to that CALA is here every now and then, that I forgot her post a while ago in Soapbox about worrying about needing to travel via airplane to the location of her and her OH's vacation.

Again, I'm sorry but hopefully some of the others crate advices have been to some help for you. Hope everything is mostly going onwards and upwards with your puppy.