How long does it take to housebreak?

[disoleman]

We have a female puppy that is 11 weeks old. We have had her for one week now. She is doing pretty well so far with housebreaking. She'll go a day with no accidents, sometimes two days. We have to watch her like a hawk though. When we do take her out, she knows what she is supposed to do. We tell her to "go potty" and she'll usually go within a minute. We are crate training her and she never goes potty in the crate. She is on a regular feeding schedule. I would like to hear about some of your experiences as far as how long it took your pup to start letting you know he/she has to go "outside." We are still waiting for her to go to the door to let us know she needs to go "outside."

Thanks

 

[TigersMommy.]

Tiger only started going to the door on his own when he was about three months. Very rarely does he cry, he mainly just comes and sits down in front of me looking at me. Then, once he makes eye contact moves his head and looks at the door. He is very subtle about it. Good luck on the potty training, sounds like you are doing really well with it!

 

[Mia's Dad]

Good Luck

Mia was really good, really quickly. She started going to the door at about 15 weeks. Now she will go to the door and whine a little and if I cannot hear her she will come to me and lick my leg to say, "hello I need to potty." I would not recomend getting to confident at 4 months like I did. Your little one will have the accidental slip up every now and then. I just got to confident in Mia and she let me down one day. Stay with it, from what you said you are doing very well. Rumor has it that they are not fully house trained until about one year.

 

[Monte21]

house breaking

Phoebe is 13 weeks now, we got her at 8 weeks old. We still keep a close eye on her, but after 10 weeks she started to sit at the door. Also, we have 2 bells tied to a ribbon near the base of the door, we would kick the bells each time we would take her out. the funny thing is, if we can see her, she sits at the door, if we are washing dishes or out of sight, she rings the bell now. and yes, it does get a little annoying letting her out everytime she rings the bell, but i think it helped the potty training go quicker. last weekend she had a couple of accidents in the house, but i've heard dogs arent reliable potty trained til 9-12 months. both times she was playing by herself and just stood up and went, i think she was distracted and wasnt thinking where she was. We have crated trained her too, she spends about 7 hours a day in there. she is still having accidents in her crate if no one comes home during the day to let her out, but we just keep a rotation on towels for her. by the way, we still keep a very close eye on her and she does NOT have run of the house, we have a screen set up between the family room/kitchen and the rest of the house. she does not like going in the famrm/kitchen but doesnt mind sneaking into the living room to do her business, so she is cut off from the rest of the house. as for nighttime, she sleeps on our bed with us and makes it thru the night for the most part, but will wake us up if she needs to go. good luck.

Monte & Nichole
parents to Phoebe - docked and floppy

 

[Tucker's_mom]

We did the bell thing too and it has helped us immensely. From our living room, we can't really see the back door, but we always hear the bell. Lately it's become sort of a pain though because if we don't get there quick enough for him, he'll just keep ringing away :rolleyes:. We can also tell when Tucker's gotta go because he takes the most direct path right to the door, instead of the detour around the table.

Tucker's almost 6 months now and he's trustworthy about 95% of the time. When there's too much excitement, he just sorta pees without even realizing he's doing it. It's almost like his bladder has literally overflowed. He also occasionally has accidents during the day while we're at work, but those are few and far between now (and not really his fault).

 

[Bumblebee]

It did not take very long to house break Tobee. But he did not start telling us he had to go outside till about a few months ago. He is just over a year old. That is my fault though. We had such a hard time house breaking Jake, that we took Tobee out almost every hour to hour 1/2. We never let him get to the point of having to let us know he had to go outside. We finally started letting him sleep out of his crate at night about two months ago. That is when he started letting us know he had to go outside.
I think it all depends on you and your puppy. Each puppy is different. Jake was a nightmare to house break:( Part of it was he was our first dog and we did not really know how to house break him and part of it was him.
Just be patient and never asume she is house broken. The minuite you let down your guard, that's when you start to have problems.
Good Luck

 

[CJ's mom]

We got CJ at 10 weeks and we didn't start with the housebreaking correctly. It's supposed to take 2 weeks for puppies, and at the end of 2 weeks I felt like we were getting nowhere. Then I got some good advice and he finally understood what we wanted! They say an adult dog can be house broken in 2 or 3 days and after our not-so-good start that's all it took for him at 12 weeks with the right method. He is now almost 15 weeks old, but he is still only about 80% reliable, and we usually take him out often enough so he rarely has to ask us. But I've been noticing lately that he is starting to tell us he needs to go. It's very subtle, he heads to the door and just sits in front of it. He doesn't make a sound, he might look at us and then out, but other than that not much of a signal. And if we don't react IMMEDIATELY he goes right in front of the door! :( (We have to keep a plastic drop cloth there.) But considering what a nightmare the first two weeks were, I am VERY proud of him. And it wasn't his fault - we didn't know how to correctly housebreak him. I have never heard of teaching them to go on command before, and it is sooooooooooooo helpful!!!!! I never had a Boxer before, just a Lab/Dalmation puppy (and a Dalmation adult dog), and I keep comparing my Boxer to that mix I had (and loved) and I am absolutely amazed at how much smarter Boxers are!!!! CJ learns to understand short words amazingly fast! The lab/dalmation took forever to understand but was very willing, this new Boxer understands almost immediately but isn't necessarily willing...:D

 

[Jnifer]

I didnt think Ash would ever be potty trained but day after day he started giving us signals. Now he goes and sits and our door or he will bark at me. I am so proud of him now, he is a year old and it has been about 4 months since I cleaned up after him.

Good luck to you, and one day you will realize hey no more accidents.