house training - puppy - advice

brians_daughter

Hi all,
we have had our pup around 5 weeks now. He seems to be great but we are having some issues with toilet training.

He has a crate and the door is always open, even at night now. He is confined to a room when unattended and seems very happy. Hes started to use the cats cat flap to let himself out the back to go and toilet in his spot. In the night he does this - theres never any accidents in the morning. When hes left for short spells (ie 2 hrs or so) he also goes out the flap and does what he needs to do.

The issues are when we are home. We watch for all the signs etc and take him out (even tried putting him through the flap rather than open the door) but he will not toilet outside. He will run in and before i can get to him hes done what hes doing on the floor. This only ever happens when we are there. Its like the total opposite of what our past dogs have been ie clean when you are with them and accidents happening when left unsupervised!

We are obviously giving treats/ shouting from rooftops when he does it where he should and he seemed to learn very quickly and he started to use the flap of his own accord. We do say 'no' etc when we run to catch him doing it in the house as we catch him in the act. We never leave him unattended when we take him out to do his business but he will dart past really quickly and its hard to catch him due to the layout of the rooms/cat flap etc.

Any ideas on what we can try? I am at a loss as to what to try next

blossomsuz

I have trained both my pups to "wee wee" and "poop" on command (ideal for long car journeys etc.

Maybe whilst you are home try popping him out every hour or so (stand with him) until he goes, when he does lots of praise and a high value treat, he sounds pretty clean it may just be that when you are home there are more interesting things to think about than his bodily functions and he may need gentle encouragement

krlyr

I think one of the things that may be contributing to the issue is the cat flap.

Often with housetraining, having an open door can actually make it harder for a pup to grasp the idea - yes, they have access to the garden when they need it, but they don't have the distinction between indoors and outdoors. The garden essenially becomes another room in the house, and the puppy struggles to distinguish which one its supposed to use.

If you can't stop using the catflap due to the cat, then I would try to act as if it's not there. Make a point of taking pup out on lead, staying out with him, giving treats and praise when he toilets (and you can introduce a cue phrase, e.g. "weewees", "go potty", "do your business" etc. you say as he's toileting)

If you take him out and he's too distracted to go to the toilet, don't let him engage in play - it's a toilet break, not a play break. Take him back in but offer another pee break within 5 minutes.

Good luck