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What's the norm for housetraining?


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I know there's a wide range of normal, but I'm wondering what others' experiences are with housetraining their pups. My puppy is 19 weeks old now and will hold it all night, but I am still taking him out every 1.5-2 hrs. during the day, unless he's sleeping. He's only let me know he needs to go out a few times, so I mostly just go by the clock and make sure I bring him out frequently. He'll go 2 weeks without an accident and then have one out of the blue though, like today. Online most of the info. says that dogs should be able to hold it for 1 hr. plus their age in months, so at 4 mths. they should be able to hold it for 5 hrs. That seems like a lot to me. I'm home during the day so my pup isn't crated during the day, but even a crated pup wouldn't hold it that long comfortably I would think, yet I'm still wondering if having to go out every 1.5-2 hrs. at 4-5 mths. old is normal, and when can one typically expect a Shih Tzu pup to hold it for more than a couple hours?

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There really IS no norm, and I have found that every Shih Tzu is different in regards to house-training. Some catch on quickly, some never seem to "get it", or they only "get it" when they feel like it, lol. The only prescription is patience.

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Do you have a way for him to let you know? I am still in the process of training my Shih Tzu (10 weeks), but I have a Yorkie that I trained using bell hanging from the door knob. I would hit the bell each time I took her out and she quickly caught on to do the same when she needed to go potty. Even at 10 weeks old, Parker has started hitting the bell a few times, granted he is far from potty trained, but he is already starting to understand that the bell means go outside.

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I have a bell on the door, but he just likes to play with it. The other issue is that he still won't go down stairs, so he can't actually get to the door when he is upstairs, so he usually just goes to the top of the stairway and then I take that as him needing to go out. If he's downstairs he will go up the stairs to get to the door and I take him out then as well, otherwise I just bring him out if it's been around 1.5-2 hrs. and he's not sleeping. I'm not complaining because 1 accident every couple weeks isn't a huge bother and he sleeps through the night most of the time, just wondering when I can likely expect him to hold it longer.

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Sounds like he is doing great! I'm on a 15 minutes after drinking, then every 30 minutes schedule right now. I can't wait till we get to every 1.5-2 hours!

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babybluegirl

This is an interesting read as I was wondering how long is "normal" for keeping newspaper down in the house for toilet training. Ideally I want the dining room to return to normal with no newspaper down and baby gates around so that I'm happy we won't have any accidents and Riley can roam the house without me constantly worrying that he'll have an accident somewhere when I'm not looking.

Currently because the weather has been so nice, I have always left the patio door open and during the day Riley tends to let himself go outside and I'm always right behind him so that I can praise him like mad for toileting in the garden :) During the day, I have been trying to take up the newspaper so that he doesn't go inside, but that's because the door is always open. When the weather gets colder/or if it rains, I won't want to keep the patio door open all day everyday, so will put the newspaper down just in case. But ideally I want Riley to let me know he wants to go outside, rather than him not seeing the newspaper on the floor and deciding it's okay just to toilet wherever he finds himself. I might have to try the bell idea, but is this ideal? ie. what happens if we go to someone else's house, have I therefore got to take the bell with me? Can Riley let me know another way instead that doesn't involve props?

Hope this all makes sense.

babybluegirl

10:49pm

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I never used a bell with my Foxy dog. He usually would run to the door and do a pee pee dance there, or he'd sit in front of me and just stare and then if I asked him if he wanted to go outside he would started jumping up and down. With Mr. T I set up a bell on the door but it seems that he and my daycare kids just want to play with it, so I don't know if I'm going to ever have success teaching him to ring it. It's just a couple little bells tied onto a ribbon that is tied onto the door, so it'd be easy enough to take it with me to other places if I had to. Right now he seems to tell me sometimes when he needs to go out by running upstairs to the door if we are downstairs, or sitting at the top of the stairs and facing the landing if we are upstairs. I'm fine with that though and don't really care if he never learns to ring the bell.

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