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Potty Training

2K views 4 replies 5 participants last post by  TuckeredOut 
#1 ·
Hey all!

Did anyone else have problems potty training their fur babies? She doesn't warn me when she needs to go and I try to take her out every hour but sometimes she pees up to three times in one hour. I take her up after every nap but sometimes we take her outside and then come inside and she will pee. We wait the ten minutes like we are supposed to and we use positive reinforcement aka treats and verbal. Does anyone have any suggestions or anything? PLEASE HELP
 
#2 ·
I don’t know how old your girl is, but most dogs won’t tell you when they have to go out until they are much older. Puppies pee a lot and usually have to go every time they change activities. That means when they wake up, finish eating or drinking or after they have been playing. You really need to restrict the amount of freedom they have in the house until they can show that they are not going to potty in the house and they can hold it longer between potty trips. A crate or expen is a good choice for confinement. Try to be patient and remember that potty training takes time. Also every accident you allow them to have in the house is a step backwards and you need to evaluate why it happened and adjust your strategy. Good luck!
 
#3 ·
Try taking her out more often, even every 20 minutes, and use confinement to keep her contained in between trips. Once it clicks for her what you want her to do outside you can go back to once an hour and then start stretching it out. If you contain her someplace with her bed, like an small ex pen or crate, she will hold it there and she’ll be more likely to pee when you go out - therefore more likely to figure out what you want her to do outside.

Because she’s a tiny dog and has a tiny bladder, I sort of see it as two parts to potty training - the teaching/training part and the physical development. it will probably take longer for her to be able to hold it for long blocks of time and be reliable enough to roam around the house, even up to or past a year old. The good news is that Havanese are super smart so if you intensify your teaching and are really consistent, you’ll be able to quickly stretch out your potty breaks to a more manageable amount of time, such as every 4 hours, while she’s growing and developing. Just dont stretch out the time if she is having accidents.

Also, first potty in the morning was always a great opportunity for me because I knew my puppy would always go right away so I could make a huge deal out of it and give treats and he really remembered that.

Mine started letting me know he needed to poop as a little puppy, but he didn’t start letting me know he needed to pee until much, much later, after a year old.
 
#4 ·
How old is your puppy? Personally, Oliver got pee down more easily than poop, potentially because he was always confined unless he had just gone outside. He does get squirmy and jumpy and nips at me when he needs to go, at 6 months. He’s quite good with poop now too, but you have to take him out at the right time. We might be having poop accidents but I’m preemptive about it. One thing that has (oddly!) helped is the fact he’s gravitated to only sleeping on our bed. He would NEVER have an accident on my bed. He just goes crazy nipping at us till we take him out, vs when we had him in the ex pen/ crate setup by our bed, he’d poop if we didn’t get to him in time. I think Havanese are very trainable but you have to put in that effort of avoiding accidents because they’ll go where they had gone in the past. Which means for small pups, confinement. Oliver is pretty reliable, but I’d still never trust him unsupervised. He’s earned being out of the expen where I can see him most of the time. He also goes back when he or the kids are being too excitable. We still have nipping at kids and clothes. He’s teething. I found a bloody tooth in my bed the other day :shudder:
 
#5 ·
You could be describing my exact experience with Tucker--at one point, he was peeing so frequently that we called the vet out of concern that he had a UTI! I was ready to tear my hair out and trying hard not to express anger or frustration when he peed on the carpet ten minutes after peeing outside. I hung in there, ignoring the "accidents" and giving immediate praise and a small treat when he peed outside. One day, when he was about five months old (I think), the switch flipped and he began very consistently going outside, letting us know when he wanted to go out and having hardly any mishaps in the house. Hang in there! It will happen!
 
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