Crate training at night and potty training question

What do you guys think of crate training vs not? I keep reading things that say it's the best way to go but I just don't know if I like the idea. Right now I have the puppies in our Master bathroom with a babygate and they have an area to sleep with a blanket, their food and water and a paper for accidents. I'm wondering if this is a good idea? Will this teach them that it's ok to pee/poop in the house? Should I not even have the paper? They just stay back there at night and when they are wanting to nap. They already seem to prefer it when they're tired and want to go back there. I'm not working during the day right now so I'm able to take them out and play with them and keep them in the living room, etc. when I'm out there but there's been several accidents even with putting a paper out and trying to watch them and grab them up when it looks like they're going to go. I don't know how long it takes to potty train but it's been pretty hit and miss so far. They are now 9 weeks old. Sometimes they will go on the paper, sometimes have an accident in the house and sometimes go when I take them outside. Sometimes they just sit down outside or just play. Am I doing everything right or is there something I could be doing better?
Would it be better to have them in a crate at night or when we're gone rather in our bedroom? Or does it really matter?

[mom@homenow]

Nine weeks is too young to master house training. I don't know how many puppies you have there but the more there are the harder it is to take them out at frequent intervals and also they play sometimes together inside and they should be taken out right away after- but again that's hard to do. A few weeks from now, sometime close to 12 weeks, they will be much different and you should have better results with potty training. At that age I've been successful at potty training the pups to go outside in about 2 weeks, but pee accidents happen occationally throughout the first year, especially if they have been exercising and come in and take a big drink of water and I forget to take them back out a little while later. I've never trained multiple pups at once though, and so I could focus my attention on the one. I don't think what your doing (keeping them in a small confined space) vs. crate training will have much affect on potty training, especially since you are around to take them out several times a day. Lots of dogs are paper trained first, then trained to go outside. And, by the way, the very young pups (like yours) do have accidents in their crates, just like yours are having off the paper.

Yours are also a little young for intense chewing, in my experience again that starts at about 12-14 weeks and can last many months, it depends on the breed and the personality. The chewing is the reason you may find you want to switch to crates, because the puppies may destroy your bathroom in short order if they are chewers, and depending on their size some may also learn to climb over the baby gate... and get into trouble.

[Red931]

I basically agree with what Mom said. I have a crate but I have never put the door on it so it has always been like a dog house for them.

Putting them in a gated bathroom is just like being in a large crate, I agree with Mom's time frame on the house breaking and what had always worked best for me is taking them out every three to four hours until they get used to going outside.

If you keep taking them, even if they don't have to go they will begin to want to go outside once they can control their bowel movements better. You will still have some accidents but you will find that in time they will start going to the door to let you know they have to go. Make sure you use the same door when taking them out for now so they get used to relating the door with going out to do their business. It is easier when you use the same door. The front door or the back door, or vice versa whichever you have been using.

Mom is also correct in that after there has been a little excitement such as playing take them out. Sometimes at their age they will just go right in the middle of it and there is just nothing you can do about that.

In three to four weeks you should notice a change. They will be chewing and chewing as Mom said also. One of mine chewed the living room table and the corners of a couple of walls. I don't think you will have that big of a chew problem with the breed you have though.

[April2]

Ok, thanks! Mom, I have two toy poodle pups. They're sisters and I got two hoping they'd keep each other company, play and sleep together, etc.
Sometimes they seem to do well with pottying on the paper or outside, sometimes not. I guess we'll have to give it a few weeks then and see how much they improve.

And I hope they aren't real big chewers! I will make sure I have enough toys to hopefully help with that.

So, they probably won't be fully potty trained for a few more months, right?
What about sleeping through the night? Sometimes they can go 8 hours, sometimes only 4 or 5. I'm not sure why. I do try to play with them and tire them out by bedtime. Last night I didn't get too much sleep because they got up at 4:30am! They had been getting up around 6:30am for the last few days so I don't know why they got up so early this morning. But they did take a long nap this morning. I hope they can start to sleep through the night more consistently soon cause I'm about cross eyed from lack of sleep, lol.

[Red931]

Their sleeping habbits should normalize as well when they are at about 12 to 16 weeks. They are just like little babies right now. The good part is that they mature faster. They are going to want to be as close to you as possible. If they will stay on the floor in the bedroom then your golden, but it isn't really a good idea to let them sleep in there at this age as they will quickly get used to it. That is one thing I can testify to on a stack of Bibles, believe me.

Have they stopped whimpering so much or has it at least slowed down? They should be pretty attached to you now as their mommy.

When Ghilly and Ginger come back on they may have some good suggestions for you with setting them up to get a better night's sleep because as I said, I have always broken the rule and let them in the bedroom and now I have one that sleeps in the bed all the time.

I will say that I think the breed can sometimes make a difference as all of my Shepherds always slept or sleep on the floor even though they were allowed on the bed.

[ginger899]

Oh gosh! Don't ask me! I am a terrible example! I let Misty into my bed, UNDER THE DUVET, every night. I break all the rules about things like that, In our case it works out fine. My bed smells like sweet dog and crushed grass......good job she is a nice clean dog!
I am incorrigible, and she is like my little sis. But we seem to have an understanding. This privilege does not make her misbehave in any other areas of her life. She is a good obedient dog.

A word of warning though. You can not make a decision, then change your mind back and forth about it. A dog will not get that. If you allow your dog into or on the bed more than 3 times, that dog will think it's for the duration. Then if or when you change your mind, find you can't sleep, and decide doggy must now sleep on the floor, don't be surprised if re-education becomes harder than you thought! Once you make a choice you will have to stick to it. Don't worry about that. If your dog knows his place is on the floor, or on the sofa, or in the porch....(whatever) overnight, he will be quite happy with his lot, so long as it stays the same each night.

[Ghilly]

I adore crate training!  My Kate was 10 weeks old (she's a rough collie) when I got her, and I started crate training her that very first night.  Within about 10 days she was housebroken and she just turned seven on the 13th of May, and I can count the accidents she has had in the house on one hand and still have fingers left over.

The reason I like crate training so much is the following - If you put the puppy or puppies in their crates when you go out or go to sleep, you know that when you come home or wake up you can take them out of the crates and immediately take them outside, let them do their thing, and then spend time loving on them, playing with them and teaching them whatever it is they need to learn at that stage of their life.  You don't have to first spend half an hour cleaning the floor or picking up whatever it is they got into while you were out or asleep.  The problem with coming home or waking up and finding a mess is that you cannot reprimand them for it, because unless it happened a minute before you found it, they are no longer able to make the connection between their action(s) and the reprimand.  All it does is confuse them.

The main thing to remember is that the crate, like any other piece of dog equipment, can either be an excellent training tool or an implement of abuse.  It's all in how you use it.  It's a tool for training, not a substitute for training.  In other words, you use it to help you maintain control over the situation in your absence, you don't use it as a "prison" because you can't be bothered training them properly.  As long as you keep that in mind and act accordingly, the crate is a wonderful thing.

Sometimes people undermine their own attempts at training without even realizing they're doing it.  If you catch your puppy peeing or pooping where they should not, peoples' first reaction is usually to speak in a very loud, very firm voice "NO!!!!!!!  BAD DOG!!!!!  OUTSIDE!!!!!", scoop up the puppy, and run for the yard.  The puppy is now totally confused because, well, he has already GONE to the bathroom, so there's no connection to be made between the feeling of having to go and what the yelling accomplishes is it makes him think that he's just not supposed to go in front of you.  It's not the inside-bad, outside-good message that you had hoped to convey, but it has become the "don't let me see you do that" message.  Now the puppy starts sneaking off to unoccupied rooms to do his thing because in his mind, that's what you wanted.  Since it takes time to teach dogs how to understand a few words in English, and since it's darn near impossible for humans to ever be able to speak "dog", crate training takes care of this naturally, since a dog, and even a puppy, will not pee or poop where it eats and sleeps.

There are many excellent articles that explain the ins and outs of crate training, if you would like to read some of them before making a decision I can get web addresses for you.  For my money, though, you can't go wrong with the crate.  Done correctly, the housebreaking is done in usually less than a month and it is done with a lot less stress than the old methods.

Ghilly

[Red931]

Ghilly has made a lot of good points with the crate. She has covered it fowards and backwards for you.

I just disagree with the statement that a puppy will not pee or poop where they sleep because when I first tried crate training with my first bulldog, she was in the crate for no more than eight hours while everyone was at work and she did poop in the crate.

Once I saw that happening I would come home during work hours to take her out and she would still do it in the crate. With that, I started to do what April is doing right now except I gated off the kitchen instead of the bathroom. Once she was in the kitchen she went on the paper and less frequently because she wanted to wait until someone came home to take her outsside.

After a few weeks she started to realize that as soon as someone came home she was going to go outside she was housebroken.

I will say again, that I think that by gating off a room regardless of the size of it is still like crating becuase the dog is still confined to a certain area. At least when you do it this way the dogs doesn't have feces all over themselves if they do go inside the crate.

In my case the crate has become a place where the dog feels safe when nobody is home. The door is off as I said earlier and there is a bed inside and a blanket over it so that it has been made into an indoor dog house so to speak.

Long story short you really have to try different methods until you find which one is working the best with your dogs as they all have different personalities.