Toilet Training In Apartment

[BT-Argo]

Hi All

What is the best way to toilet train a puppy in an apartment? What I am proposing is:

1. A pet loo (with grass) on the balcony for when we are home and take him out constantly to the balcony.

2. When at work the pup will be confined to the kitchen and I am proposing to have a small fake grass toilet on a mini toilet (from vebopet) with pee pads underneath That way its the same surface as the balcony.

He is paper trained currently with the breeder, so when we bring him home should the kitchen have paper put down everywhere and the grass tray in the corner?

When he is older I want to move the toileting to outside/downstairs on grass as opposed to the balcony or house but this is an effort at this point.

Any comments, help etc is appreciated

Thanks

[Pretty Miss Emma]

I think the fake grass ideas are a good option but you'll have to train him to use them.

If he's paper trained I wouldn't be putting paper down everywhere as he'll just go where ever there is paper!! If he is actually using the paper to toilet on maybe put a small bit of it on the fake grass so that he starts to associate that area as the toilet.

But if you're wanting him to use the pet loo's as the toilet you'll have to use them in exactly the same way as if you were taking him outside when training (ie. after eating/sleeping/playing and probably every 30-60 min while awake) and make sure he doesn't get off the pet loo until he's actually done all his business. So it will probably be worthwhile keeping him on lead to do this at first so he doesn't have an opportunity to wander off elsewhere to toilet!

[Stitch]

You will have to restrict the pup to the areas where you have put the paper down initially so that it gets the idea firmly in its mind that that is the area to toilet and not the rest of the apartment.

When you are not around the pup should be confined to this area so I suggest you get a Puppy Exercise Pen. You can move the Xpen around to what ever area you want, put paper or whatever down inside part of it so it can toilet and also have a section of it to sleep/play ie bed/toys etc.

[Guest donatella]

I have a unit toilet trained pup and I found the wee pads to be great she has her little corner, she took to it quick and now that she's older she instinctively knows to go on the grass when we go out for walks, but I still use the wee pads everyday for inside use.

I bought a fake grass toilet and she just chewed the fake grass, didn't take to it at all! don't spend hundreds of dollars on these, depending on your dog you might end up with shredded grass which is what happened in my situation. Wee pads for the win

[toy*dog]

all our pups are trained from when they are born to wee on newspaper you just paper the whole area which happens to be a pen. but a young pup doesn't exactly know they are operating on instinct so it would be a good idea to confine your pup to the kitchen where they can't get out to the entire house and paper the whole floor when you aren't there. you will have to train your pup to get used to toileting on the fake grass and this takes time when the pup has been brought up on newspaper. but getting wee pads or a piece of paper already weed on gets them to do it in a specific area and gradually you can perhaps train them to the fake grass. with my rescue kelpie cross boy, i confined him at the start to a specific area and put real grass down and branches so he could lift his leg mainly in the garage taht was attached to the house, for the first few weeks he was not house trained at first. gradually he got used to doing it there and then i moved it out and now he is housetrained only been one or two accidents in the whole 5 yrs that we've had him.

[minyvlz]

I have a unit toilet trained pup and I found the wee pads to be great she has her little corner, she took to it quick and now that she's older she instinctively knows to go on the grass when we go out for walks, but I still use the wee pads everyday for inside use.

I bought a fake grass toilet and she just chewed the fake grass, didn't take to it at all! don't spend hundreds of dollars on these, depending on your dog you might end up with shredded grass which is what happened in my situation. Wee pads for the win

My lot will chew on the pee pads but not the fake grass though. Then again they didn't take to using the fake grass so they toilet downstairs twice a day.

[BT-Argo]

Hi all

Thanks for the replies. I pick up my puppy this weekend so I see how I will go. I will get the fake grass and have paper on hand also and see what works best ..

I have pee pads as option too if all else fails.

Thanks again

[Nushie]

We use fake grass on our balcony with a dog door. When we first got him home, we papered the entire floor of his pen (including the top of the fake grass) when we weren't home. When we were home we would take him to the grass and put him on top when we thought he needed to go. We slowly reduced the paper surrounding the tray until it was only on the grass and then reduced it down until we werent using paper at all. The breeder had told us he was "trained" to paper but we weren't sure if that meant he would go from a non papered area of his pen to the paper to go not, so we just papered the entire floor but if you are sure that your pup is actually trained to go to the paper than i would recommend papering the tray and some of the surrounding area and reduce it down from there.

We still have the grass so that if we are out for long periods he has access to go, but generally he goes when we are on our walks. It really didnt take him long to take to it.

We have a stack of spare grass but dont go and buy the additional grass from the companies that make the trays, we just got a strip of fake grass from Bunnings and I can make 3 spare grass squares out of it (our tray is about 60cm x 60cm). Jager actually prefers the grass from bunnings. I have watched him a few times with the grass that came with the tray and he circles the tray for a bit before going and it worries me that that hesitation might one day lead to "mistakes". Costs about $25 for the strip of grass from Bunnings, far cheaper than the $80 from the company (just for one).

[BT-Argo]

We use fake grass on our balcony with a dog door. When we first got him home, we papered the entire floor of his pen (including the top of the fake grass) when we weren't home. When we were home we would take him to the grass and put him on top when we thought he needed to go. We slowly reduced the paper surrounding the tray until it was only on the grass and then reduced it down until we werent using paper at all. The breeder had told us he was "trained" to paper but we weren't sure if that meant he would go from a non papered area of his pen to the paper to go not, so we just papered the entire floor but if you are sure that your pup is actually trained to go to the paper than i would recommend papering the tray and some of the surrounding area and reduce it down from there.

We still have the grass so that if we are out for long periods he has access to go, but generally he goes when we are on our walks. It really didnt take him long to take to it.

We have a stack of spare grass but dont go and buy the additional grass from the companies that make the trays, we just got a strip of fake grass from Bunnings and I can make 3 spare grass squares out of it (our tray is about 60cm x 60cm). Jager actually prefers the grass from bunnings. I have watched him a few times with the grass that came with the tray and he circles the tray for a bit before going and it worries me that that hesitation might one day lead to "mistakes". Costs about $25 for the strip of grass from Bunnings, far cheaper than the $80 from the company (just for one).

Hi Nushie

Thanks for your reply.

Can I ask which grass did you buy from bunnings? is it the really short and cheapest one or is the more realistic long grass that is heavier and more grass like?

Thanks for your reply thats what I am aiming at doing also.. I know it will take a few weeks or more.

[Nushie]

Hi Nushie

Thanks for your reply.

Can I ask which grass did you buy from bunnings? is it the really short and cheapest one or is the more realistic long grass that is heavier and more grass like?

Thanks for your reply thats what I am aiming at doing also.. I know it will take a few weeks or more.

I bought the long grass, the more realistic stuff, not so much for my liking but he is very dainty with his feet and the short grass i thought his feet might get damp as it drains. I think the grass is about $60 for a metre (about 2.5m wide) and i get 60cm so its about $35 and i can get 3 sqaures out of it.

Just another tip that i found - again Jager is very sensitive about the grass - i clean it every week and i bought a high pressure hose (we dont have a normal hose but that would work too) and we clean it with that each week and then soak the grass in a tub with a small amount of washing powder overnight, replace the water with clean water and soak overnight again (without the washing powder). If i only hosed the grass off, it still had a bit of a pee smell and Jager wasnt too keen on that. Giving it a good soak with the washing powder got rid of it and he uses it happily. And if i am feeling extremely lazy and i dont want to change the grass one week, it doesnt matter.

I find that i can push it to 2 weeks without noticing any smell. But pushing for 3 is a little too long, and you start to get the faint smell drifting into the house. But 2 weeks there is nothing. I empty the jug every afternoon and rinse that out though so that might help cause you dont have pee sitting around.

Edited November 21, 2011 by Nushie

[rastus_froggy]

Sounds gross but see if you can get a small bit of soiled paper from the breeder to take home with you and immediately put it where you want your puppy to wee (either on pee pads or on the grass) they are attracted to wee where they have gone before so this should attract your puppy to the right area.