Chihuahua house training tips?

We've had a chihuahua before but she was an adult when we adopted her and already had abysmal house manners, something we struggled with all her life...

So far Larry (Renamed from Papi because my hubby insists he looks like a Larry) is great about going on the pads, Sophie? Not so much...

They're going outside as well, but I thought I would use pads as a back up..is that a bad idea? I actually don't mind the pads, find them easy to deal with and they don't stink, but if I use them now should I plan to always use them?

I have both good and bad to say about potty pads.

Mia was pad trained by her breeder when I got her and she ended up having a lot of housebreaking troubles brought on by (imo) her generalizing to 'its okay to pee on anything on the floor'. So rugs, laundry that got thrown on the floor, towels, etc were all fair game. I ended up having to tie her to me (for various reasons) and take her out every couple hours and really praising and treating her for going outside. I also had to pull up all rugs and the potty pad too to prevent her from going inside.

Now, I actually use a potty pad successfully with the girls. I think it's a great help on days I can't get home at lunch. They can hold it but I feel much better knowing that they don't have to, especially if I get caught in traffic or something unexpected happens. Last night when Mia was sick, she got a large majority of her mess on the potty pad, which also was a very good thing. So I don't think it's a bad thing to have at all. And Summer actually acclimated from never in her life seeing a potty pad to using this one occasionally without a problem. Mia uses it a lot more. It's not messy at all unless a dog is sick and then it would be even messier if there was no potty pad.

If I were doing a potty pad now with a puppy, I'd have it set up in the dog's pen area. any time I was home, they'd go outside. The potty pad would be in the same spot in the pen always. I would want it to be very distinct from everything else in the house/on the floor. I've even seen people put a little mini fence around the potty pad. Seems like a good idea to me to keep the area even more distinct from everything else. You can definitely wean dogs off of them too if you want.

That's a good idea to make it a distinctive difference, it may work very well!! I just don't want to hinder them...

We have a room for the chihuahuas, with a designated pee pad area. Here's a photo of it:

20120317-DSC_6515 by Chihuahuaesque, on Flickr

You could also put the pad in a large litter box

So cool. I need a Vizsla room!!