New puppy owner thinking of going from potty pads to outside?

Sam314159

Congratulations on the puppy Cam! He looks awesome! We were in very similar shoes just a few months ago with our 7 week old Min Pin, who's now 6 months old, and the great advice on this forum really helped us get by.

I'm by no means a dog expert, but here are a couple of tips we learned from keeping Rocco in the laundry for 8 hours a day while we worked.

This is what Rocco's home looks like:

• We keep a radio playing in the laundry room to help drown out some of the outside noise. Rocco gets pretty anxious when he hears something in the house, like the ice machine for example.

• I love the Kong idea. We leave Rocco a Kong, a Wobbler and an IQ-Ball and they are all empty by the time we come home. There's not much food in them to start but it lets him "graze" like Tess mentioned. Some times he actually just empties them but doesn't even eat the kibble.

• Rocco went through a phase of shredding his puppy pad when left home alone all day. We started using a puppy pad holder and that worked with him.

• We found a puppy daycare close to our house that's only $15 a day. We drop him off every Wednesday and he gets to spend the day playing in a backyard with a few other dogs instead of home alone. He is EXHAUSTED, and nasty, once we pick him up. We like breaking his week in half with Wednesday's being play days.

• We found that a hot water bottle wrapped with one of our old shirts made our departure in the morning a little less stressful on him. Most days now he runs into his crate in the laundry room on his own as soon as the hot water bottle is inside.

• We're learning that the transition from puppy pad to outside potty is definately a slow process, as we expected. He's pretty solid about using his puppy pad and like others have mentioned, once we get home the laundry room is closed and we go to the backyard to potty. He's slowly getting there but we're in no rush.

• BTW, puppy pads are almost 50% cheaper on Amazon than at a pet supply store store.

• Hopefully this won't happen to you guys, but if it does I just want you to be kinda prepared for it: We have come home on some occassions to find that Rocco got bored enough to chew on the door frame (even though he has chew toys there). He doesn't do it often but 8-9 hours is a LONG time for a puppy to get creative.

Good luck with the new puppy!

Sam314159

Oh I also meant to add one more thing, it gets a lot easier to keep him calm and relaxed in his puppy room once he's had enough shots and the vet clears him for public parks and walks.

We found that Rocco's "bad" behavior in his puppy room is inversely proportional to how much time we spend in dog parks or long walkd on the weekend. If it's a rainy weekend, he makes his displeasure known that Monday.

Here's our little bad boy in action: (he stole my wife's hat)

Dawnben

This might help with teaching where to go. You also might find her other videos helpful with training other fun things. He is absolutely adorable.
House training a puppy or rescue - YouTube

Tess

Sam, its great to "hear" from you, and thanks for sharing all those terrific tips on what worked for Rocco!

Yes, this is a fine forum, because of folks like you who pass on what they have learned!

Kyllobernese

You should definitely have food and water available to the puppy during the day. That is too long a time for a young puppy to go without food. I have raised puppies during the winter when they really could not go outside in well below freezing weather and switching them to going outside was no problem.

I usually just use newspaper as they seem to delight in tearing up the puppy pads and making a play toy out of them. I have also used a litter box with wood pellets in it and that has worked well. Seems to really keep the odor down but they do tend to track them around a bit. I would not use the litter box stuff they use for cats in them.

camarojsmith

Thanks everyone. This is exactly what I was looking for when signing up on this site. Lots of friendly people that want to share their experience. Me and my wife are going shopping tonight to get a crate, kong, toys, bed, food, dishes, leash, and I'm sure many other things.

Sam314159

My wife and I are going.

We do more than just puppies on this forum. lol I'm just kidding! Glad you're here to ask questions, I hope some of what we learned with Rocco over the last few months will come in handy!

The main thing you have to do now is keep posting pictures of your puppy growing up!

Tess

Ha! Do we have an English teacher in the house!

bigpawsup

I didn't do too good in English!

camarojsmith

My fingers work faster than my brain most of the time.