Keeping Baby Puppies Out Of Pooh

[Podengo]

When I was helping with my friend's litter I would crate the puppies while cleaning inside, when they were outside I would keep them away from me with a puppy pen.... Nothing worse than trying to scoop poop then having puppies jump into the poop them claw your legs with their tiny poop covered sharp nails!

[WreckitWhippet]

It's amazing how quickly they do take to toileting outside when given the opportunity. I am yet to clean up a puppy poop or wee today and they are 5 weeks old.

[piper]

It's amazing how quickly they do take to toileting outside when given the opportunity. I am yet to clean up a puppy poop or wee today and they are 5 weeks old.

Agreed.

I have only had 2 litters. The first of 9 and the second of 2. But even with the 9 I rarely had an issue with poo and puppies in poo (only when their mum was on antibiotics when they were a couple of weeks old and it went through them a bit). I used a method similar to the 1 linked earlier with both litters and gave a designated toilet area in the whelping box from a couple of weeks old. I found that when I changed the box that the majority of wee was in 1 corner anyway and it was the corner near the door to the box. I placed a small piece of artificial turf there to start off with. Then as soon as they were getting in and out of the box, I moved that to just outside of the box and then eventually to the corner of the room furthest from the door. With the litter of 9, I then placed a larger piece of artificial turf down and found all wees and poos were confined to that area when they were inside (that was a winter litter so they were inside from about 4 or 5pm until around 8am) and I missed taking them out in time or overnight.

The litter of 2, as I described were inside due to extreme heat for the bulk of the day and I just walked outside calling them whenever I noticed them stirring from a sleep or when they had been playing and starting to slow down, or anytime I felt like they looked restless. The girl we kept from that litter, I can honestly say was house trained by 10 weeks and taking herself outside as needed. By 4 months she was not even confined over night and the only "mistake" was me not getting to the back door quick enough in the middle of the night so she went right by the door.

The effort is worth it - I would rather put in that bit of time than deal with poo covered puppies and poo tracked all over the place and your puppy buyers will thank you for it.