I have a Golden Retriever puppy that is almost 6 months old. I was wondering at what age should she be able to hold her bladder until the morning? It seems that she sleeps through the night and then when she first wakes up she relieves herself. As she wakes up before us we are unable to get down to her before she goes. She sleeps in the kitchen and always seems to wake up at about 5.45am, it doesn’t seem to make a difference if we put her to bed at 9pm or 11pm she still wakes up at the same time. We thought this was because of the dawn but now the sun comes up later and she still wakes up early. The same thing seems to happen when we leave her to go to work in the morning, when I come in from work there is usually a mess to clear up. She is fine when we are at home as we take her outside and she has only had a few accidents when we haven’t been vigilant enough. A lot of people talk about crate training but my wife isn’t keen on that so it isn’t an option, the trainer at our obedience class has told us to show our displeasure of when it happens by not talking to her and putting her in another room while we clear it up but this doesn’t seem to be working either. An advice would be greatly appreciated.

The simplest soloution is to break the habit.. :-)

Get up at 5 am put the pup out for a quite piddle etc and bring her back in she will go back to sleep for a bit and you can jump back into bed for another hour or so..

It can take a good year to get them 100% trained but you have to make the effort I am afraid to break the cycle so she gets the idea...

My personal view is showing displeasure never works, your effort and a lot of praise for the dog will do it.

Good luck.

My GSD 5 1/2 months and can now go through until 7am. but she was waking a 5am to pee, but each day i made her wait 5 mins and gradually she has got to 7am which i don't mind as i have to get up for the kids anyway.
But try extending the time by 5mins the could be checking she has water and watching her for signs of wanting a wee, it can be a pain it frist doing it but it is well worth it in the end and just think each night you get an extra 5 mins in bed before you have to get up, u will also have to use an alarm clock to do this.
good luck

Thank you both for your suggestions. I will try getting up at 5am to try to get there before she does her business and then try leaving it 5 minutes longer each day. I only want her to be able to hold it until 6.30am so hopefully this will work.

The other thing of course is to allow her unlimited water during the day but to restrict it during the evening so that her bladder is less full during the night.

If you restrict her water in the evening and overnight, her bladder may be less full, but she's likely to wake you by crying because she's thirsty.

Just a thought but have you thought about crating at night, our pup who is crated has had dry nights since the second night we got him.