Potty Pads in the crate?

[lexicon]

My puppy is almost 10 weeks old and during the day we leave her in the crate for about 4.5 hours at a time. We leave for work around 7:30am, come home for lunch to let Lexie out for about 45 minutes at noon and then put her back in around 12:45pm and then we come home around 5:15pm.
Her crate is a larger crate (that is what the people at PetSmart told me to get so she could grow into it). So, there is enough room for her bed and then there is a space between her bed and the door of the crate to put a puppy pad. We use that so that if she needs to go potty during the day, she can. And, she uses it usually everyday.
Is this teaching her a bad lesson? She doesn't go potty on it during the night, because we take her out when she tells us to. I know she is too young to hold her bladder that long, that is why we made that decision. She never goes poop, she always waits until we get home.

 

[KonaKoffe]

In my opinion, No, because that is exactly what we did. Kona is almost 10 months and was mostly trustworthy at about 5 months. In my opinion no dog can be truely reliable until 1 yr. As the weeks went by she was able to hold it for the 4.5 hrs with a clean cage and at 6 months we left her for 9 hrs and the cage was clean. Sounds like this is the best choice fro your circumstances. Sounds like the poop is already under control and the pee will come with maturity.

 

[Stefan]

No!!!

Absolutely not, not so much for teaching her a bad habit but also a safety issue. Potty pads have an absorbent gel in them somewhat similiar to maxi pads. Puppies tend to tear things up and eat things, these could potentially be a health hazard. If you know she is going to potty because of the amount of time you leave her put a small blanket or towel if neccessary.

I would also suggest partitioning the crate to make it smaller or get a smaller one for the time being. You don't want to spend extra money which is understandable but having to big of a crate promotes accidents as it allows the puppy to get away from the accident.

 

[clemtigersc]

As we were crate training our puppy which is now 9 months old and she doesn't go in the cage at all anymore. We sectioned off the cage with just enough room for her to get up and turn around and lay back down. We would just place a towel in there for her to lay on and she may have had 2 or 3 accidents in the crate since we had her. I would say that its promoting her to use the crate as her potty place. But what I would suggest is like Stefan say and section off the crate with a divider that should have came with your crate because I got her crate from petsmart also.