# It feels impossible to tell when my puppy needs to potty



## lialili338 (Mar 13, 2021)

I've tried taking her out at the usual times--after waking up, eating, drinking, and playing. I've tried taking her out when it _seems_ like she's sniffing the ground. I've tried keeping her to a strict potty/feeding schedule. But it seems like I'm not reading her correctly, because most of the time she seems to need it she doesn't go. Then when I least expect it, she'll have an accident.

It's hard to tell when she's doing a curiosity/exploring sniff vs a potty sniff. I think she's still sniffing the ground out of curiosity since she's new here. It feels like most of the accidents she's had so far are when she's showing no signs and then she suddenly goes.

I don't know if she goes every 2-3 hours. It's really hard to time/predict when she'll go at all, besides after meals.

I'm very frustrated--not at her, mostly at myself. I feel like I'm reinforcing bad habits or doing something wrong. Maybe I'm being too hard on myself, we've had her for just about 24 hours. I might also be frazzled from slight sleep deprivation.


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## PeggyTheParti (Sep 5, 2019)

24 hours? Oh goodness. Definitely go easy on yourself.  And your puppy, too. _She_ may not even know yet when she has to go, which would explain why you’re not seeing any consistent signs. Or she may feel the urge and absolutely have to go with only a moment’s notice.

Are you following this method?









Errorless Housetraining


Housesoiling is a spatial problem, involving perfectly normal, natural, and necessary canine behaviors (peeing and pooping) performed in inappropriate places.Housetraining is quickly and easily accomplished by praising your puppy and offering a food treat when she eliminates in an appropriate...




www.dogstardaily.com





It’s all good, but this part is key:

*Why release the pup every hour?*
_Why not every 55 minutes or every three hours? Is it really necessary to do it on the hour? Puppies have a 45-minute bladder capacity at three weeks of age, 75-minute capacity at eight weeks, 90-minute capacity at twelve weeks and two-hour capacity at 18 weeks. Releasing your puppy every hour offers you an hourly opportunity to reward your dog for using a designated toilet area. You do not have to do this precisely each hour, but it is much easier to remember to do so each hour on the hour._


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## twyla (Apr 28, 2010)

Hang in there you are on the right track, it just takes time. As they say Rome wasn't built in a day, nor was a puppy potty trained.


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## For Want of Poodle (Feb 25, 2019)

I personally don't give a damn if my puppy is housetrained in the first day, week, or month. 

Biologically they are so young - it's pretty impossible for them to know when they need to go. How should you know, if she doesn't?! 

I have potty trained an adult dog in a less than a few days, with zero accidents - she was a lost dog we found, we honestly didn't realize she wasn't housetrained, we just treated her like we normally do with new dogs and let her out regularly, praised when she went outside, took her out if she looked like she needed to go. Her original owners said she was never housetrained and we hadn't a clue! Dogs with mature bladders in a clean house are relatively easy to housetrain. But puppies just aren't biologically there.

So, I did my best, expected me to make mistakes sometimes, expected her to not get it, laughed, didn't take it personally, and sure enough, even though I was far from perfect, she is a perfectly housetrained adult dog. 

Relax - enjoy your puppy. Go buy an extra large package of paper towels and a big bottle of enzyme cleaner, if you haven't already, scoop up that puppy, and have a nap


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## Michigan Gal (Jun 4, 2019)

If you kinda sorta know what time to expect her to potty, take her outside for a walk. Preferably with low distractions. Just keep her on grass, if you can. I like them to go near a tree or large bush, so if you can do that, it would be the best walk. Have treats ready. You have 3 seconds between squat and treat. I have kept dogs out for 25 minutes and longer in anticipation.


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## Starla (Nov 5, 2020)

Phoebe was the same way so I can commiserate. She is the only dog I’ve ever known who gave absolutely no sign she was going to pee until she peed. From playing to peeing. From walking to peeing. Just anytime she would start and she didn’t care at all about being scooped up midstream. After a few weeks she did start to give cues, and at almost 6 months old I would say she is 95% potty trained. I have never had a dog take so long to figure it out. People say it’s typical but IMO it is not typical, but not outside of ‘normal’ either.


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## lialili338 (Mar 13, 2021)

Starla said:


> Phoebe was the same was so I can commiserate. She is the only dog I’ve ever known who gave absolutely no sign she was going to pee until she peed. From playing to peeing. From walking to peeing. Just anytime she would start and she didn’t care at all about being scooped up midstream. After a few weeks she did start to give cues, and at almost 6 months old I would say she is 95% potty trained. I have never had a dog take so long to figure it out. People say it’s typical but IMO it is not typical, but not outside of ‘normal’ either.


That makes me feel a lot better. I felt like I was just missing something. So far there's been only one time where she was incessantly sniffing for a _split_ second, and then she peed. I scooped her up midstream, like you said haha.


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## cowpony (Dec 30, 2009)

Some puppies are easier than others. My boy Galen was tough. He would just unload randomly and go back to playing. The only consistent factor with him is that he would always pee or poop after getting the zoomies inside. I knew to hustle him out the door if he started racing around. My current puppy Ritter was relatively easy; I just needed to plop him on the grass and he would do his business. Despite the difference in their early habits, both ended up getting housebroken at about six months. Ritter was maybe a week or two earlier than Galen.


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## lialili338 (Mar 13, 2021)

For Want of Poodle said:


> I personally don't give a damn if my puppy is housetrained in the first day, week, or month.
> 
> Biologically they are so young - it's pretty impossible for them to know when they need to go. How should you know, if she doesn't?!
> 
> ...


Thank you for this. I think it's good to remember to loosen up and to not be so hard on myself.


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## lialili338 (Mar 13, 2021)

PeggyTheParti said:


> 24 hours? Oh goodness. Definitely go easy on yourself.  And your puppy, too. _She_ may not even know yet when she has to go, which would explain why you’re not seeing any consistent signs. Or she may feel the urge and absolutely have to go with only a moment’s notice.
> 
> Are you following this method?
> 
> ...


I do admit to not using her crate as much as I should. One, because my mom grew up in a country where her dogs didn't use crates, so she's not totally sold on them--but Yin-Yin's breeder definitely crate trained her to some degree, so my mom's warming up to it. Two, Yin-Yin acts like we're killing her if we're at all away from her, even if I'm next to her while she's crated (though she does settle in her crate eventually). I 100% know that's not an excuse, but I've let it slide for today because I've been with her all day. Tomorrow or even tonight I will start crate training her.

My mom did make a homemade bed for her out of a big old basket, and she's never wet herself there. So that's been her little "home" throughout today.


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## Mfmst (Jun 18, 2014)

Buck was very subtle until I put bells on the door and then he faked potty when he really wanted play. I used a schedule based on feeding/ digestive processing and likely erred on false alarm outings. Just praised, partied and treated when we had a good result outside. He didn’t have free rein in the house until we had no accidents. 4 months? Can’t remember, but he would die rather than go indoors. He is so fastidious that he points out places I need to pick up in the yard. You’re doing all the right things, it takes a minute with their immature digestive systems. Best wishes!


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## PeggyTheParti (Sep 5, 2019)

Her bed is a perfectly appropriate spot for her if you don’t feel strongly about crate training. It’s definitely an investment to create positive associations with a crate.

Peggy had multiple spots around the house where I would tether her while I did chores, typically with a chew. If I left her sight at the beginning, it was only for a split second, and she quickly stopped caring because I always came right back. From there it was easy to be gone for increasingly longer durations.


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## fjm (Jun 4, 2010)

24 hours... It's not even early "days" yet! As others have said, I would cut both yourself and the puppy some slack and just concentrate on making her feel safe and secure and loved for a few days. Everything is easier when you know each other better and have had time to establish a routine. I am sure you have seen this, but it seems very apposite: Kidnapped From Planet Dog - Whole Dog Journal


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## curlflooffan (Mar 27, 2020)

I felt the same way the first week. I think it was also all the fluff on my puppy! 

But it got better as we got to know each other. We are in our 3rd week now and although its not perfect with each accident I got a better idea of what went wrong and what her needs were. 

I think also the challenge the first few days was for her to become comfortable with the new environment. We struggled a bit with outside potty I think simply because she was nervous having moved from a suburb to a city. I think I made it a little bit worse by taking her out soo frequently, it was just creating stress for her. 

I was watching her like a hawk, pulling her out after every meal (which was difficult to predict as she was refusing to eat), nap etc. It was very stressful. I have no settled into an every 2 hours routine which has worked better.


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## PeggyTheParti (Sep 5, 2019)

curlflooffan said:


> We struggled a bit with outside potty I think simply because she was nervous having moved from a suburb to a city. I think I made it a little bit worse by taking her out soo frequently, it was just creating stress for her.
> 
> I was watching her like a hawk, pulling her out after every meal (which was difficult to predict as she was refusing to eat), nap etc. It was very stressful. I have no settled into an every 2 hours routine which has worked better.


I wish everyone could be this adaptable. When I recommend Ian Dunbar’s book or methods, it’s always with an unspoken caveat: _Listen to your puppy._

That’s not always easy for those who are new to dogs. There are also folks like my husband who can be very literal-minded. If you give him instructions, he will follow them to the letter. Instructions regarding living, breathing creatures require a little more flexibility.


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## lialili338 (Mar 13, 2021)

curlflooffan said:


> I felt the same way the first week. I think it was also all the fluff on my puppy!
> 
> But it got better as we got to know each other. We are in our 3rd week now and although its not perfect with each accident I got a better idea of what went wrong and what her needs were.
> 
> ...


Your puppy sounds so much like mine. Mine does eat but it seems like not a lot. I also pull her out _every_ time it even seems like she needs to go, and maybe that's not helping as much as I think it is. And watching her like a hawk is stressing _me_ out a ton.

I think, as lots of people have said here, it'll just take time for both of us. There will be accidents and that's normal. We just need time to learn each other, and she definitely needs more time to accilmate.


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## Raindrops (Mar 24, 2019)

Misha struggled with potty training. The crate method did not work because he didn't mind peeing in it. He was happy to sleep in pee. It just took a lot of repetition. He could not have access to anything soft because he immediately peed on it. After 6 weeks he was getting fairly good with the peeing outside but pooping still took a bit longer. 24 hours is nothing to worry about.


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## Skylar (Jul 29, 2016)

Yes, that first week is a steep learning curve for you and your puppy. The goal is to ease your puppy into her new home with love and joy. Accidents are expected to happen early on.

Every day, every week and every month your puppy is growing and maturing and slowly getting more control over her bowels and bladder. It will get easier , slowly you will have less accidents and you’ll learn how to avoid them.
Keep working on toilet training, keep notes if it helps, and in a week or two you’ll look back at this time and realize both your puppy and you have learned a lot and are getting better at pottying and having less accidents. in a few months you’ll look back and say it wasn’t too hard and in a year you will look back with a well trained dog and appreciate you did a good job.

One mistake we learned early on was to wait a 5 minutes after the pee to see if our puppy needed to poop. He is the kind of dog that pulls at his leash to get out to that potty spot on the lawn to pee…then he pees immediately. Then he would pull on the leash to go back inside the house. Dr Dunbar said to wait after a pee… and we thought we were waiting enough. But our sense of long enough turned out to be a minute or two. We needed to wait 5 minutes. He fooled us because after he peed, we assumed his wanting to go back inside was because it was done. As a young puppy, even he didn’t know he had to poop. It took several accidents for us to figure out what we were doing wrong and to fix it so he didn’t have accidents indoors.


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## I_love_dogs (May 30, 2021)

I read all the how you are supposed to potty train. They are extremely judgemental and tell you that you are a horrible person if your dog has an accident in the house. 
My spoo puppy could only go 15-20 minutes without peeing when we got him at 9 weeks when he was awake. He was like that for a long time. I had him tested for a UTI and diabetes it was so bad. There was nothing wrong with him. He is 5 months now. He can hold it longer than before, but not the long time the books say. I ended up pad training him so that he had some place to go if I could not take him out immediately or he was was in 'fraidy cat mode and wouldn't go outside.


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## PeggyTheParti (Sep 5, 2019)

I_love_dogs said:


> I read all the how you are supposed to potty train. They are extremely judgemental and tell you that you are a horrible person if your dog has an accident in the house.




I’ve never seen a house-training guide that suggests you’re a horrible person for letting a puppy have an accident. I would steer clear of those resources.

What they may be trying to say is if you blame the puppy for making a “mistake” during potty training—when they’re still learning what’s expected of them and have limited bladder and bowel control—you can set the process back. It’s much better to see accidents as a management issue than a failure on the puppy’s part, and react accordingly.


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## curlflooffan (Mar 27, 2020)

PeggyTheParti said:


> I wish everyone could be this adaptable. When I recommend Ian Dunbar’s book or methods, it’s always with an unspoken caveat: _Listen to your puppy._
> 
> That’s not always easy for those who are new to dogs. There are also folks like my husband who can be very literal-minded. If you give him instructions, he will follow them to the letter. Instructions regarding living, breathing creatures require a little more flexibility.


Well I literally just cleaned up pee... 

So lets wait until I have actually been successful in housebreaking my puppy before praising my methods


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## cowpony (Dec 30, 2009)

One of the mistakes I made with Galen was not noticing early on that he was a double pooper. I would bring him in after the first poop, and he would promptly leave a second one on my floor. I needed to learn to play with him long enough to get the second poop. He also had a bountiful bladder. He would pee copiously in the grass, I'd take him inside, and he'd pee again on the floor (or worse, my couch) five minutes later. It was just so frustrating. I had housebroken multiple puppies before, and he made me feel like a complete incompetent. When he was 5 1/2 months I was figuring I'd be locking him in his x-pen for another 5 months. Then at roughly 6 months he just pulled it together.


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## lialili338 (Mar 13, 2021)

Michigan Gal said:


> If you kinda sorta know what time to expect her to potty, take her outside for a walk. Preferably with low distractions. Just keep her on grass, if you can. I like them to go near a tree or large bush, so if you can do that, it would be the best walk. Have treats ready. You have 3 seconds between squat and treat. I have kept dogs out for 25 minutes and longer in anticipation.


The problem with grass and my puppy is that she LOVES grass. It's like catnip for her. She'll just roll and romp around and get completely distracted. That said, just about anything outside distracts her--leaves, rocks, bugs, etc.

EDIT: I stand corrected. She just peed in the grass and I was extremely proud of her. Maybe I just need to keep an eye on her. The grass is as tall as she is, so it's hard to tell when she's peeing.


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## Mfmst (Jun 18, 2014)

I forgot to mention that we let puppy Buck have the whole tiled kitchen and hall. Stored all the rugs. My softhearted husband could not bear to hear B. crying in his crate. I would get up in the middle of the night, early in the AM, but there were still accidents. I cleaned them up and took all the fault on myself. I never got angry at him, just at myself for missing that immature window, to have an outside success. The good news is that I only needed to use that enzymatic cleaner on tile and didn’t have to put crate pads etc. in the wash. Downside was I had to retrain that the crate was a good place. He’s too smart to actually believe that to this day, but I didn’t want vet, groomer drama. Just have a huge praise, treat party when your new puppy goes outside.


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## Bailey_Whiskey (Jan 18, 2021)

Hang in there!! After 6 weeks home with us, our newest puppy (not poodle) is still not fully potty trained.
After much frustration with Whiskey, I learned we both needed the time to get used to each other’s schedule. And that takes quite a while, 6 weeks isn’t even long enough for us yet.

BUT there is hope, I’ve figured, she needs to pee at 6am (used to be 4am) to avoid an accident in the morning. She’s also one of those that don’t even realize she needs to pee until she needs to pee, even when walking. You’ll learn her schedule soon enough, and accidents are bound to happen.

In my mother’s words “a child takes that much time to be potty trained, what more do you expect from a dog?”


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## Liz (Oct 2, 2010)

The Monks of New Skete book is largely overlooked these days because of the section on dominance, but it does offer good guidance on house breaking and how to use dogs' natural instincts not to soil their den to teach them appropriate potty areas. In short, the book suggests that when the dog arrives home, limit his/her access in the house to only one room/space and offer frequent trips outside to potty (I took Mia out every two hours--including over night--using a timer on my phone). When the dog goes one day without an accident in the home, you can increase access to a second room/larger space, and so on. If all goes well, as it did with Mia, after a week the dog has full run off the home and you're sleeping through the night again.


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## Meganf1027 (Oct 22, 2018)

I would definitely not expect too much after 24 hours, and every puppy is different! 
I struggled with mine with potty training.. i tried it all with her and nothing worked. Finally at 7 months we got Bells and it was like a switch flipped for her. She started pretty quickly ringing the bells and crying when she needed to go out and the accidents stopped. You just need to find what works best for your puppy!


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## Asta's Mom (Aug 20, 2014)

Trained Asta too, to ring potty bells. He caught on very quickly. However there will come a time that he rings just to go outside. If he does this it is swoop back inside, no cookie. This usually occurs at puppy's Adolescent period when so much is going on and it seems like puppy has forgotten all his commands.


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## Sylvia K (Feb 4, 2021)

Raindrops said:


> Misha struggled with potty training. The crate method did not work because he didn't mind peeing in it. He was happy to sleep in pee. It just took a lot of repetition. He could not have access to anything soft because he immediately peed on it. After 6 weeks he was getting fairly good with the peeing outside but pooping still took a bit longer. 24 hours is nothing to worry about.


This sounds like Ernie's early struggles with potty training. I stopped worrying about it pretty quickly and just let nature and 'big brother's training young upstart' take it's course. I think the big brother part was probably what worked best really, and eventually Ernie just suddenly became house trained in what seemed to be an overnight transformation! Maybe it was a result of my not worrying about it . 24 hours is really no time at all. Relaxing and enjoying your pup's puppyhood is so important.


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