Toilet Training Help Please

Hi,

I have a 13 week old female staff and she is great and doing very well settling in at home with us and im going throught the toilet training with her but am having some problems.

During the day in general she is going outside regularly and is going to the toilet and at night im putting her in a crate from approx midnight till 7am and every morning ive gone out she has messed in her bed.

I have never owned a staff before and always have german shepperd pups which have always been fine in a crate and been able to hold on till the morning so is it simply that she cannot hold it in long enough ?

Also on a few occassions she will go into her bed during the day and then wee which i find very weird as i have always been told that a dog will never mess where she sleeps unless she really cant help it and definitley not out of chioce.

Ive not bothered with paper training as i cant see the point as she is in the conservatory that leads right onto the garden so can anyone tell me exactly whats best to do when toilet training as when she makes a mistake and goes in the wrong place i dont want to tell her off by putting her in her bed as thats meant to be her safe place and if i put her in the garden i dont want her thinking its a bad place.

Any help would be so appreciated as every morning is a nightmare with the mess in her bed and its having to be scrubbed and washed every day and dried for that evening ready again for bedtime.

Hope this all makes sense lol.

Thanks

Hiya,

You sound to be doing everything right. In my experience my first staffie did this and I was at my wits end, although she was a lot older. I would take her out similar times as you but she would still mess the carpet (I never used a crate) over night. I ended up testing her for everything! I thought it maybe an intolerence, but nothing showed up. Finally after changing her diet, and changing her feeding times it stopped.

Mine was older than yours but maybe have a look at feeding times. Shes stil young and I totally understand the crate not being a naughty place! When she goes outside I'm guessing you stay with her and tons of praise when shes done her business. I honestly know how frustrating it is but she will get there x

personally i paper trained my Katie and it worked very well, when your dogs goes to the toilet outside give her plenty of praise, have a read of this thread i wrote a while ago, it may help you some bit,

patience, persistence, and praise. these are the 3 Ps to remember when house training your puppy, as with a human baby, you must be patient, tolerant, and understanding of your pets mistakes, making him feel loved and wanted. not rejected and isolated. you wouldn't hit a baby for soiling their nappies. as you would realise that he/she was not yet able to control his/her bowel movements. be compassionate with your puppy. never rub his/her nose in their excreta. never indulge in the common practice of punishing him/her with a rolled up newspaper. never hit your puppy with your hand. he will only become hand shy and learn to fear you. patience, persistence and praise

Ive been told i need to feed her 3 x a day so if i feed at 8am, 1pm and again at 6pm will this be ok and give her time to empty her bladder if i take her out before bed at approx 11pm - 12pm ?

what about when she does wrong should i make a naughty spot or just tell her NO and ignore her for a min or two ? i already go made and squeal at her and make so much fuss when she goes in the garden - the neighbours must think im insane lol !! so there is no doubt she knows when she is being good.

twice a day will be enough

Ok thanks for all your help any ideas why she is going to the toilet in her own bed ?

Personally I would feed twice a day, I was recommened 3 times by the vet but it didn't work! I did the same feeding time as you. I changed mine too 7.00am out for morning toilets and then breakfast, 8.00am out for a walk/garden and usually another toilet. Then fed again at 3.00pm then 4.00pm walkgarden. And then last thing at night as late as I could. It did nearly work straight away. What foof are you using too, because a diet change could help also

Ummm actually to disagree at 13 weeks she still needs 3 times a day i would say....

If u catch her actually going where she shouldnt then a firm NO or AH AH and ignore her completely but if u dont actually catch her doing it then its pointless trying to tell her off she wont remember what shes done. If i was u i would take her outside every hour or half hr which ever u think she needs and stay out there till she does something and praise like u have been and a high value treat. Yeah im not gonna lie its sooooo time consuming but she will learn quickly and soon u will find shes trained and u didnt even realise lol x

im currently feeding her pedigree chum dry food for puppies its what she has had from the start and she seems to like it but if im honest im probably giving her more than she should have as the portions size looks so small that it advises i give her so ive been bumping it up and she is eating it all.

Right......lol
Yes she will love pedigree as its full of very tasty stuff thats very bad for her somes of colours additives and fats. If u take a look in the health section i have done a list of very good high quality food that will be sooooo much better for her

I trained kaiser in this way i paper trained him in the day gradually getting him to go in the garden and in the day when i was at work my neighbour would call round 3 times a day to let him go in the garden for a wee but he did still soil his crate which i thought was unusual but he grew out of it and was fully house trained by 15 weeks old i wouldnt worry to much they only have tiny bladders and 7 hours is quite a while to a pup they will most probably grow out of it within time

Yes pedigree chum is bad its apparently like feeding ur dog a mc donalds everyday

Oh and try to stick to the reccommended amounts unless shes doing a huge amount of exercise regularly (which at 13 weeks i doubt she is lol) she doesnt need anymore than is stated, she will eat as much as she can, dogs are scavengours (spelling) and will eat like pigs if given the chance! x

http://www.canineconcepts.co.uk/item--15kg-PUPPY-Chicken-Arden-Grange--arden-grange-puppy-jun---guides

hope its ok but could someone tell me if this is best to get so i can order some asap as im almost out of pedigree chum and i wanna put her on a good diet unless someone else can offer me a link to something even better - including price too plz lol as it varies so much site to site

I feed kaiser wainwrights and he loves it its dry food which i prefer to meet good price to but not too cheap either

I dont know the site, but Wainwrights is meant to be a really good brand of dry food. Just google Wainwrights dog food and just take a look at who does it cheapest. I am getting my staffy puppy next saturday and intend to feed him raw, but until I've done the research and got what I need for that, he'll be on Wainwrights puppy food.

You beat me to it Kaiser!

blaze666 wrote:Ummm actually to disagree at 13 weeks she still needs 3 times a day i would say....

If u catch her actually going where she shouldnt then a firm NO or AH AH and ignore her completely but if u dont actually catch her doing it then its pointless trying to tell her off she wont remember what shes done. If i was u i would take her outside every hour or half hr which ever u think she needs and stay out there till she does something and praise like u have been and a high value treat. Yeah im not gonna lie its sooooo time consuming but she will learn quickly and soon u will find shes trained and u didnt even realise lol x

I'd agree with this. Also, some pups find it more difficult than others to stay clean over night. As she gets older this will become easier for her, but you might need to get up during the night for a little while to let her out in the garden. 7 hours may be too long for her at the moment. Although pups don't like to mess their beds, when they are with their mum it's a simple matter of being pushed to the edge of a large box & then coming back again! In a crate, the pup can't actually get away from it's bed, and so if it can't hold on, it'll go wherever it can. Don't get me wrong, I'm a strong advocate of crates, I use them myself & wouldn't be without them. But if you use them, you sometimes have to make a point of getting up at, say 3 or 4 am for 15 minutes just to let a pup relieve itself.

I can't comment on the food as I feed raw & have done for some time. However, I think 13 weeks is a little young to cut down to 2 meals, and would sugest reducing the quantity of each meal instead. All I would say is please don't use Chum or Bakers - both are full of additives which can cause hyperactivity & allergies.

Shontelle wrote:You beat me to it Kaiser!

lol shontelle it is good food i tried kaiser on lots of different food but he would go a day sometimes and not eat any of it so kept changing it but this one he always eats it with in the day and sometimes a have to top him up which was un heard of before

right here i go i would agree with blaze you should be feeding 3 times a day for another couple of weeks.
re the food pedigree is fine for some dogs but rubbish for staffy as blaze said there is a great list on here of dry foods my choise would be royle cannine.

and the messing in the bed if its just wee it just the fact of bladder control becouse of age it will inprove.

and lastly welcome to the forum

You could try attaching a play pen (small) to the open crate so she has a choice to go on the puppy pads in the play pen if she simply can not hold it in or she is going to get into habit and you don't want that or forcing her to mess in her bed, every dogs digestive system is different my male goes four times a day and my female five - six times a day, but if you do catch her a good firm no should do the trick. A doggy door may also be helpful and safer if you get an electronic one which only opens for her collor.