# No more pads or do pad plus outside??



## kal74 (Jul 6, 2015)

Chili is 11 weeks and has been doing great with going outside and using the pad in his playpen if needed but goes outside most often since we take him out a lot. We crate him at night and he goes from 10pm-630am without issue since 8 weeks so nights are great. I'm wondering when would be a good time to try and have him in the playpen without the pad? We've only had a few accidents on the carpet outside of the playpen but I blame us for them and not taking him out right before playing, he's had very limited access to the house/carpets in general most of his time is spent outside or in his playpen (hardwood) playing with us. 
My biggest concern is leaving him for more then 1-2 hrs in the playpen without the pad, I'm assuming he'll have accidents since he's not in the crate? Should I just start crating him more when we go out vs using the playpen? Our system is working for now but my concern is that I plan to have him only go outside but would be willing to do both if that works I'm just not sure if I'm confusing him at this point.


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## LovelyLily (Mar 26, 2013)

He seems to me to be a little young to reliably hold it for three or four hours during the daytime hours, and of course you want to set him up for success. Perhaps he is not too young, but I recall mine was not able to reliably hold it yet at that age (but she is a female, so perhaps that matters?) I also remember that at that age if I did not watch her like a hawk when she was out of the IRIS pen she would quickly run to pee on throw rugs, so I got rid of all the throw rugs until she was totally trained.

What sort of playpen are you using? If it happens to be an IRIS xpen (had the interlocking plastic panels for walls), I had previously read on this forum that when you sense your dog can go the four or so hours that you are going to leave him then make the pen its smallest size to test his ability. If he does not succeed, enlarge the pen size and put the puppy pads back in until he matures some more. Very soon he will be ready to reliably go the long stretches of up to four hours. 

Others are probably much more knowledgeable, but my humble opinion would be to stick to what you have been doing space wise during his waking hours instead of trying to switch him now to being crated during the day time-- since he will then have to go through a traumatic switch being so confined. They do not want to soil what they see as "their space" and only do so if they cannot help it (illness or puppyhood), so if he is in a small enough area to identify it as his space but still have room to move around and play a bit and sleep, to me, that is ideal.

When mine was little I had a crate by the side of my bed for night time, with half of the crate containing her bed and the second half containing the pee pads. During the day she was in the IRIS pen unless she was being carefully watched. Gradually as she matured I expanded her space more and more in the house, and by ten or eleven months of age she had free run of the house and did not have accidents. 

She is trained to totally go outside, but I only made that switch after she was about four months of age (switched my mind about pad training after a trainer told me that in her experience pee pad trained dogs pee on carpets or other things in homes throughout their lives).

Linda

Linda


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