I have a 9 week old half springer/ half lab. I have had him 2 weeks and he is lovely. I know I'm very lucky that he is using outside during the day with hardly any accidents, we have used the treats/ignoring method. But! ... at night he wee's everywhere except the newspaper!  we take him out at 11pm & 5.30 am but when we come down at 5.30 the kitchen is swimming in wee.Even if we cover the whole kitchen (which is massive) in paper he will find the tiny bit where we couldn't fit it and wee there. I'm really not bothered about him using the kitchen at night as he is still a baby but I would like at least one or two wee's on the paper. He was in a litter of 9 in a house where they had biult and inside pen that had newspaper down all the time. Has anyone got any suggestions please?

Hi,

You can get puppy pads from pet stores that smell of something that makes them want to wee on it, perhaps you could give them a go, although I have to say my puppy just ripped his ones up

Good luck x

You say he was raised with newspaper - but did this cover the entire area, or just the sleeping area?  PS - I would never encourage a puppy to go inside (so called 'paper training') as you are then struggling uphill to wean them off this and teach them what you now want them to do :(

Please stop using the newspaper (or puppy pads).  This method teaches the dog that it is "ok" to toilet inside, and then you have to re-train the dog that it is NOT ok to toilet inside.  It takes twice as long this way.  And it looks like your dog doesn't want to toilet on something inside the house anyway. 

If you come down at 5.30am to take him out, and the kitchen is "swimming in wee" as you say, then that tells you that he can't hold on that long and you should get up at, say, 2am to take him out. 

A crate would help, but you would HAVE to get up to take him out if you use one, because it's not fair on a puppy to force them to toilet in their sleeping area.

http://www.ddfl.org/behavior/crate-train.pdf

http://www.clickersolutions.com/articles/spt/SPT_Crate_Training_Info.htm

Bit of a nightmare isn't it this house training lark. my pup is just 12 weeks old and we had the first clean night last night!!! hurrah!
We have a puppy play pen for nightime use, just to contain any accidents, but I agree that paper training is probaly not the best way, having tried it with our pup ! Can you contain pup to area nearest back door, as they soon learn to wait by door to be let out, so should start to make association. Good luck whatever you try, because I think they all get there in the end, it's only the time it takes that seems to vary.

Ditto onetwothree,

Patricia, it is worth the effort to get up in the early hours of a morning, to take your pup out to the toilet, it saves so much time in the long run and cuts toilet training in half sometimes even more. You can gradually start to get up later, your pup will learn to hold itself knowing you will be down to let him out soon.  Just as a new born baby needs feeds during the night, a pup needs the garden. A few weeks is so worth the effort for a nice clean home and pup.

Thanks for everyones replies. I have tried pupy pads but they don't work either though Woofa had lots of fun running around the kitchen playing with them. The house we got him from had the whole pen newspapered and this was also where they slept. I'll try getting up in the night and see if that works.My house is built very strange with the kitchen at the front of the house, so unfortunately there isn't a way to move him nearer the back door. I feel it may get better when we can take him out as he is a very energetic dog and I feel at the moment we can't tire him out enough in the house and garden and also it will help with routine, i.e going for a walk before bed and as soon as he gets up.

Patricia

You can carry him around in a bag, if he's too young to go down on the pavement yet.  This way he will get to see and meet people while in the bag, and he can also hear traffic and experience a lot of the world without the risk of catching anything by being on the pavement.  All these new experiences will help to tire him out.  If you know of any vaccinated adult dogs which are FRIENDLY to puppies, he can play with them in your garden (or in their garden).  And if you know of any other puppies which have either had their jabs or are still being kept off the ground, he can meet and play with them too in your garden.

So will training tire him out - if you buy a good training book you should be able to get training sit, down, recalls around the house to different rooms for very tasty treats and so on.  It is very easy to tire them by doing things which make them use their brains!  I recommend "The Culture Clash" by Jean Donaldson - it's available from Amazon and at the back has lots of training exercises.  It also has excellent advice on toilet training, alone training, socialisation and more.

Hi Patricia.  I just wanted to say hello as we have a puppy who is also half springer and, we think, half lab (although we can't be sure on that one).  She is 12 weeks old and quite often manages to get through the night but uf she wakes up we take her out.  We have her in a crate and have decided to put her next to our bed initially so we can hear when she wakes and get her outside before an accident happens...seems to be working OK.  I'd love to see a picture of your pup to see if she looks anything like ours.....

Hi Feebee,
nice to hear about your pup and her being same as ours, Woofa is supposedly springer / lab and I must say we can see a bit of both in him, I chose him from the litter of nine because every other one was liver & white but he was black & white. He is a lovely natured dog & a very quick learner , already at 9 weeks responding to sit, lay, gently and down. I feel very lucky with him. I'd love to exchange pics & news but not sure how as I only joined the forum today.

Funnily enough we chose ours because she was the only liver/white one in a little full of black pups!  Ours was a rescue pup - was yours?  We have some photos on the web - if you'd like to take a look, here they are http://www.flickr.com/photos/phoebefanclub/.  Lucy is the new pup, and Phoebe is our existing dog - also from a rescue centre a year ago.  We got Lucy at 10 weeks old but sadly she has been very poorly with e-coli almost since we got her.  She's on the mend now and starting to get the hang of housetraining and knows "sit" and "come" but we have lots of work to do yet! 

Feebee- love the discussing property Law photo!! :D
(just to warn you tho' its against the TOS to post links to which your affiliated..whoops!)

Patricia- Good luck, the breaks in your sleeping is well worth it,hope it goes well for you :)

I didn't realise you couldn't post links to photos.  Is there any other way of sharing photos with people on this site?

Put a link to your site in your profile and people who'd like to see the pics will follow it.