Potty Training: Min Pin 3/mo

[Jillianb04]

Hello everyone, question here. Has any potty trained a 3 month old min pin? If so, what method did you use? I'm using the pads, how long did it take? How did you displine? Does anyone know the average of how long it takes to potty train a puppy??? any advice would help...
Jack and Jill ( me!)

[Rivsky]

I think every dog gets the concept of potty training in it's own time - there isn't any time limit you can put on it.

As for discipline - there's no place for it in any form of dog training - particularly potty training - it just makes the dog initimidated by you and in many cases makes them fear going to the toilet. Can you imagine being scared that you're going to get into trouble every time you need to go??

You need to praise like crazy when your dog goes in the right place - food, treats, pats - whatever your dog likes give it LOTS. When accidents happen (which they will) just completely ignore the dog - don't let him see you cleaning it up either - just go about it quietly, quickly and calmly. This way eventually your dog will put two and two together and work out where is the "right" place to go. It'll take a lot of patience and vigiliance on your part - you've got to really look out for warning signs that your dog needs to go - excessive sniffing/circling etc and as soon as you see it lead it towards wherever you want him to go.

Good luck!!

[Beryl]

Your min pin is young but you can still start the training. Don't expect him to have sufficient bladder control for a while. He might have to go every hour. If you want to use poopy pads and keep a clean house, just take him frequently to the pad.

I trained my toy poodle on wee-wee pads and here is my experience:

Key elements for my success
1. tether the dog to ME night and day
2. crate him if I can't supervise
3. put him on the poopy pad and issue the potty command
4. praise, praise, praise when he does his business in the right place

For the first 3 months, he only got positive reinforcement for doing his business in the right place. My positive reinforcement includes jumping up and down, singing and acting like an idiot. We follow the praise with playtime. Trust me, my antics could land me in a rubber room! LOL!

After he was about 6 months old and I knew he had sufficient badder control and knew where he was supposed to do his business, I added negative reinforcement to the training. If I caught him doing bad (rare occurrence) I would say "NO!" and put him on the pad. He usually couldn't do anything at that moment so I'd put him in the crate while cleaning up the mess. (This the rare time that he saw the crate as a negative.)

After allowing time for his bladder to fill up, I'd then take him to the pad and give him our "pee-pee on the pad" command. He'd look sad and try to do something. He went back to the crate until he went on the pad successfully. After doing his business, he was free to run and play and I danced around praising him like an idiot as before.

He made fewer and fewer mistakes from 6 months old to 11 months old. In the first 6 months, Latte went from making a mistake once/day to once/week. He stopped making poopy mistakes almost from the beginning. In fact, he will race to a poopy pad to poop no matter how sleepy he is.

If I didn't catch him in the act, it is almost a waste of time to do anything. However, I am human so as I'm cleaning it up, I'm fussing about it and Latte knew that something was not right.

NOTE: Latte has trouble peeing ***ON TOP *** of the wee-wee pad unless I direct him there to do it. Like a lot of MALES, he might miss and/or do it next to the pad. Even today, I'll often tell him to "go pee on the pad" and he will do it and get the praise.

Latte is now trained to go outside (with his big bother Boo) or inside. This is a good thing for him because he doesn't have to go out in the blizzard like Boo.

I hope this helps!