My dog is almost 7 months old now, and we ogirnally trained him on pee pads, which he surprisingly did quite well on (eventually 80% hits, 20% misses). After he was about 4 months old wemoved from an apartment to a new house.
At the new house we eliminated the pee pads immediately, and trained him to go outside. We used the crate training method until he got to the point where he would sit by the door if he had to go pee. Now he's at the point where he's okay to be out of his crate as long as there is someone around to keep an eye on him.
He has only had like 5 accidents in the house, (only 1 pee, the rest poo), and 3 of these accidents has been in the past week. We found that we were giving him too much freedom and letting him go whereever he wanted in the house. It seemed to be that if he was left unattended for too long, he would decide to go poo/pee infront of the nearest door, rather then coming to find us.
So I guess my question is, how do you know when your dog is ready to be trusted not to go in the house, and to either find you, or hold it until you let him out. It's almost like when he thinks he has to go, he'll wait like 5mins and if he isn't outside yet, then he'll go wherever he is.
I would love to be able to run to the grocery store or something and not have to crate him up when I'm gone.
At the new house we eliminated the pee pads immediately, and trained him to go outside. We used the crate training method until he got to the point where he would sit by the door if he had to go pee. Now he's at the point where he's okay to be out of his crate as long as there is someone around to keep an eye on him.
He has only had like 5 accidents in the house, (only 1 pee, the rest poo), and 3 of these accidents has been in the past week. We found that we were giving him too much freedom and letting him go whereever he wanted in the house. It seemed to be that if he was left unattended for too long, he would decide to go poo/pee infront of the nearest door, rather then coming to find us.
So I guess my question is, how do you know when your dog is ready to be trusted not to go in the house, and to either find you, or hold it until you let him out. It's almost like when he thinks he has to go, he'll wait like 5mins and if he isn't outside yet, then he'll go wherever he is.
I would love to be able to run to the grocery store or something and not have to crate him up when I'm gone.