WOW!!! I don't know what kind of puppies you have had..but any puppy I have ever crated at night could certainly hold it and especially by 14 weeks of age!! Shoot..we got Pebbles at 7 weeks and she held it all night in her crate. I feel you unfairly chastised this poor poster. I have never gotten up every two to three hours with a puppy to let them out. If they wake up and cry then of course I will get up and let them out or put them on a puppy pad. Every dog is different..but I also respectfully disagree that you need to offer food and water in the overnight hours. This would only add to the problem she is having. Nothing wrong with offering your opinon Anne but you make it sound like she is causing physical damage to Archie and I did not see a DVM after your name ma'am. Cindy Lynn Money will buy a fine dog, but only kindness will make him wag his tail
-------Original Message------- From: AnneL Date: 1/27/2007 4:48:29 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Chihuahuas] POTTY TRAINING . Yes. Here's a tip. What you're asking of Archie is impossible. At 14 weeks of age, he has very little control over his elimination. Even most adult dogs cannot go 8 hours or more without eliminating, much less a wee puppy. You have literally put him in a no-win situation where he has NO CHOICE but to pee in his crate. If you continue to keep him crated with nowhere else to urinate during the night, he'll continue to do it, become accustomed to doing it, and continue doing it as an adult. A chihuahua pup of Archie's age needs to urinate every 2-3 hours AND he needs constant access to food and water. So here are your choices. Either you can get up every 2-3 hours and take him out to pee, or you can put him in a larger enclosure for the night (such as a playpen or x-pen, or a bathroom with a baby gate across the door) containing pee pads, and teach him to use the pee pads during the night. Re this problem and your other problem, I would train him to use pee pads inside the house. If you go to the files section of the group's home page, you will find a file called Housebreaking.txt that I uploaded, which contains a very easy and successful potty training technique, but it's doomed to failure if you're demanding urinary continence of a wee puppy, any more than if you expected a human newborn to be able to hold his urine and feces overnight. Anne
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