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Hello!
Hi, I'm Annabel! My 9 week old Hav, Suji, has been home with us for a week now. I've searched through several posts to help guide us through the first week and, so far, I've found this forum incredibly helpful! Thank you all for your insight!
So far, there are just a couple of things I'm confused about (which I know translates into her confusion). I have a 24" crate attached to a 16' ex-pen. Initially, I closed the ex-pen to probably 4 feet of space. From her crate, she has access to both the living room and to her pen (when the doors are open, of course). On the other side of her ex-pen, directly across from her crate door she has access to pee pads. For the most part, she has been GREAT at using her pads. If she happens to be out during the day when it's potty time, I lure her through the crate doors to the pads and either I'm decent at timing and/or she is learning to potty nearish command once there. Basically, she knows what the pee pads are for!
I work from home and typically only have to leave the house for 2-3 hours once a day. While I'm home, she's on a schedule of 10-15 minutes of playtime/training outside of the crate/pen with me and then 45-50 minutes in the crate/pen to hang out & entertain herself. So far, even when i'm not home, she has been great at using the pads for potty time. But! She also seems to prefer to sleep on the pads as well. This hasn't been too big of a concern (although it's definitely something I want her to not do). I've been clueing in that she may just generally be confused about her "bedroom" space versus her "bathroom" space. Today kind of confirmed that for me when she went potty on her crate blankie twice--once while I was a way and once when I was attempting to give her the "go potty" command. To help remedy this, I've closed her ex-pen to an even smaller space--it's just big enough for a regular sized pee pad. So, for now, unless anyone else has a better suggestion, she only has access to her crate and her pee pad, which is immediately outside of the side door, into the ex-pen. My thinking is that instead of giving her total access to a 4 ft space of ex-pen, now she only has access to her pee pad. What I'm not sure of is if whether or not I should keep the pee pad/ex-pen door closed (so she is fully enclosed in the crate) until it's her scheduled "break" time. Although, I didn't feel bad about leaving her in her crate & ex-pen area for 45 minutes at a time, I do feel SO bad about leaving her just in her crate for that amount of time--I feel like I'm locking her up!
Is this the right way to teach her the difference between bedroom & bathroom? Or is there a better way?
(Also, if this is not the place to post this, I will gladly edit and move it to the appropriate thread!)
THANK YOU!