Hi gosh well first I am so pleased to be back on the Forum for some reason I just could not get to my account as my Cookies were disabled.  Finally I figured it out and it is such a relief to be able to read and post again.
What I wanted to ask was I now have a 6 week old labrador puppy she is gorgeous and we love her to bits she is a very good girl and I have been taking her out every hour to do wee wees but yet she still manages to do them indoors.  She does No 2s always in the garden but wees are a problem.  If I keep on perservering and taking her out every hour will she get the idea and be housetrained quite soon?  How long does it take approx if I continue this way or will I have to take her out every hour forever?????
If I am not watching her how will she know to go to the front door to go outside?
My other question is I am feeding her four meals a day but this seems like an awful lot and she does not always finish her tea, I feed her at 9, 12, 4 and 7 aprox and was wondering if I could cut her down to 3 meals already.
All advice would be so very much appreciated.
Goat

If you think about an animal in the wild, there would be no earthly reason for not going at any time it felt like it. A dog for example would never empty his bladder, always keeping some back to scent mark.

The size of a puppies bladder (Although it may appear otherwise) is not very large and the fluid intake of a puppy is disproportionatly large. The old story of putting a quart into a pint pot means it is going to overflow regulaly. Add this to the fact that at 6 weeks old she will have no idea what is socialy acceptable and wet floors are the order of the day!

As to how long. One of my Labs was dry in a week (But she was 8 weeks old when we started) but another was still not reliably dry for quite a few more weeks. My Anna was not the quickest by any means although she is definately the cleverest so brains really do not seem to affect the outcome!!

I would not drop to 3 meals until 8 to 10 weeks. Not because she needs more food but because the stomach cannot hold enough at this stage to finance all the growing. It could be that you are feeding too much at a time and rather than cut the number of feed, just cut the quantity a little.

Best wishes, John

A puppy really doesn't start feeling its bladder till about 3 months and your little one is only 6 weeks...It takes a good 6 months to a year to fully house train a dog....I have found keeping the puppy on a leash so every where I went so did the pup, and I would watch for signs. When puppy starts sniffing the ground and going in circles I would just scoop pup up and say go outside go pee and take pup to the exact same spot everytime, this seemed to help...If pup started to make a mess I would clap my hands (the noise would usually cause pup to stop) then I would scoop pup up and say go outside. I wouldn't let pup see me clean the mess up in the house. I also found in the spot you want ur pup to go outside leaving a bit of poo their for next time worked as well. I would go with puppy everytime and say go pee/hurry up which ever everytime and once pup was done I would get excited and praise/treat, if late at night I just praised quietly so pup didn't get to hyped up...When not able to watch pup in house I had things to do I would kennel the puppy. Also after puppy did the duty outside I would give some free play time off leash and play with puppy and watch puppy like a hawk (this is only when I was able to give 100% of my time). I never took pup out every hour I prefered the leash method and always took out after sleeping, eating and playing and before bed... :)

You'll get there kinda like when you potty train a child except this one goes out doors and has 4 legs :D lol

Hi
That is a great idea with the lead on the puppy but the problem is she really does not like the lead yet and goes all over the place when it is on her so I can't do that.  I did think about the puppy training pads but then surely this just encourages her to go in the home.  I am letting her walk to the front door to go out but she has not made the link yet.  Will there ever be a time when she will go to the front door and sit there so I know she needs to go?
van

I have always found that while awake pups under 12 weeks need to be taken out wvery half hour.

They don't really have much voluntary bladder control until around 5 months.  As for asking to go out that varies with the pup.  some ask, some judt stare at you menaingfully :D

Bengi's 6 years and although dry in the house he won't ask but just stare at me. So when he does this i know he wants to go outside. He will rather wait for our other dog to ask ( he scrapes back door with paw ) so annoying when he does this during every evening meal thinks he wants our dinner to go cold :p

i have a 10 week old lab great dog goes out side all the time and does his buisness when we feed him he goes outside on his own he will go all night without doing a thing and when we go out he holds his self till we let him out. but he doesnt give us any idea of when he wants to go out when we are in the house its all guess work with him is there anything we can do for him to tell us lol

This is perfectly normal at this stage. Let's face it, he doesn't speak English and you don't speak Labrador! One of you is going to have to learn the other's language! After a while most dogs learn to go to the door and either bark or scratch it, whichever tactic they have found has the desired effect of you opening the door for them. Some use different tactics. My Anna for example, will sit in front of me giving me the hard stare. When I notice and say, "Is it urgent?" she will make a dash for the door looking back over her shoulder to see if I'm following. There little signs and body language will, if you watch, become clear and the problem will go away. Really, it's that simple.

Regards, John
 

Most pups will start to sniff in a circle if they are about to pee, so watch like a hawk. Did this with mine and took her out after every meal and every half hour or so when awake and I think we only had one accident int he house. Took me 6 months to train the one before though as he liked the attention when I bent down to mop up!

he goes to the door but if we not quick enough he will do it in the kitchen is this normal coz he just a pup as he gets older will he start to hold it in

Lets put it this way if a two year old chikd said to you I need wee wees, and you saw it trickling down their legs you would understand the lack of control that such young beings have.

It takes around 5 to 6 months of age before the pups will ahve good voluntary control of it's bladder, basically at this stage it needs to go almost the instant it feels the need.

Vigilance! Everything he's doing, mess and urinating are perfectly natural functions. In the wild he would do it just where he stands and really, it is just us, putting our own code of conduct on it, that deems that it should be ok to do it in one place but not in another. The fact that he actually goes to the door means he has already, at his very young age, learnt that we want him to do it the other side of the door! That's good going! He needs to find that every single time he goes to the door that it is opened for him. If this happens, he has in fact learned how to communicate to you and you will have learned his (Body) language.

Regards, John

Six weeks is very young,it took Annie 6 months to get the message,i used to take her in the garden after meals,rest and play,she came to us at 9 weeks,4 meals a day,at 14 to 16 weeks she refused her lunches and then suppers on her own. She just wanted her breakfast and tea,
Sheila.

You got to have your running shoes on! Also if I think Im not going to get them out in time I pick them up and sometimes this just gives you an extra few seconds (sometimes they pee all over you though!)

Hiya,

there has been lots of great info already about what is right and normal etc..

Can i just suggest that you get this book.. 'the perfect puppy' by gwen bailey. Even though i had lots of experience with dogs and already owned one i bought this book before adopting my pup (now 2). I read it thoroughly and am very proud to say that from the day we brought him home (aged 7wks) he has only once peed inside and that was the minuit we brought him inside from the 2hr car journey (thinking about it now i would have taken him outside first)

I know its not the norm and most people have to train their dogs but the book was excellent and we went for the real hands on method she teaches where you offer them no solution other than 'business' is done outside. This is done by a simple time table and you get used to learning what situations will result in your puppy needing to toilet.. like playing, eating, sleeping, visitors, getting excited etc.. I think for the start we were outside every 20-30 mins during the day and then up once in the middle of the night to take him out and then back to bed... come morning the routine starts again. By 12wks he was next to the door when he needed to go out.

I know this method wont work for everyone and i was very lucky to be at home when he was a pup to put the time and effort into the training, however the book is very comprehensive and i couldnt have done without it.

good luck with your training.

Roxanne

I leave the keys in my back door and my 1 yr old jumps up and rattles the keys with her paws to tell me she wants to go, the odd occation when the keys are not there she scrapes the door and winge's
And my 2.5 yr old sits and stares at me and I look at him and say 'what' and he has a winge and stands up wagging his tail and when I stand up he bolts to the back door
It's funny how different dogs have different ways on telling you it's time to go
Sharon

Let's face it - 6 weeks is too young to leave Mum really.  8 weeks should be the earliest.  We got Elsa - a Flatcoat at 9 weeks and I took her out every half hour when she was awake, the minute the woke up and always after she ate.  We still had the odd puddle and very occasional poo.  She is now 5 months and absolutely fine.

6 weeks is young, yes. But times change. My first dog was 5 weeks old when I collected him! In those days that was the norm! But this was 50 years ago and as I say, times change and people take what they are used to as being the norm. I would not recommend anyone to have a puppy as young as 5 weeks old now, or for that matter even 6 weeks but it does sometimes happen, for all the right reasons that a puppy leaves home at an earlier than desirable age. I know of this puppy and I was the person who told these people sought advice from at the time and my advice was that I would be happy in that situation.

Regards, John