Maltipoo Potty Training

Question: I am having a problem to potty training my puppy, a maltipoo. He is right now 18 weeks and I don’t see a consistency in terms of time to do his business outside. He changes a lot and we are giving him food twice a day, morning and afternoon. He is having a lot of accidents in the house and in his crate.  I am about to start working and I can’t have this problem so often.  What do I do? - from Angela

Answer: Since your puppy is over 6 weeks old, he should definately have the muscle control for proper housebreaking.  The good news is that males are often time easier than females to potty train.

It is not uncommon for dogs to still have accidents at the age that your Maltipoo is - so be patient.

Lets talk a bit about the crate - since it is somewhat surprising that he is still having accidents in the crate:

• The crate should only be big enough for the dog to stand up and turn around, no bigger.
• I would recommend at least temporarily removing all towels or blankets from the kennel.  I have seen dogs pee on the towel and then move it to the corner.  He will not like standing or laying in his own waste.

Now lets talk about reinforcing the training.  Don’t be surprised if he does not poop at exactly the same time everyday.  Usually food and/or exercise will make it happen, but not always.

• Take the water away at night, then he will pee first thing in the morning.
• Take him out immediately when you wake up.  Be patient, and make sure he goes - then let him know how pleased you are that he peed outside.
• Before you leave for work, take him out again - be sure and use the same word everytime “go pee-pee” or something like that.  He will begin to associate the word with the act.
• Once you go back to work, try and get someone to let him out during the day.
• Immediately when you arrive home, before you do anything else - get him out of the crate and take him outside.  He might be very excited, so be quick.
• Always offer plenty of praise after he goes tinkle!

A 4 1/2 month old puppy like yours should be very close to being reliable - just don’t give up!

Share This

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 22nd, 2007 at 11:41 am and is filed under Dog Housebreaking, Puppy Problems, Puppy Housebreaking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.