House training

[London Drummer]

My puppy is just 10 weeks and we have been with her for a little more than 1 week. She already likes her crate and does her business at night when we take her to potty. Problem is that we use puppy pads indoors as she doesn't have her second vaccine yet and on my garden there are always foxes at night, so during the day is hard to avoid accidents inside the house. We are not giving her treats when she does it correctly as we thought we might confused her later, as in 2 weeks time we are going to train her to potty outside after her vaccine.

Is that a good approach? Thanks

 

[JoanneF]

There are a couple of things you could do. If you have a patio area or gravel, you could temporarily fence off part of that and clean it with dilute bleach, rinse thoroughly and let your puppy use that. If her mother was vaccinated, she will have some immunity from mum too remember. Or, you could take her outside and put her down on a newspaper.

If you are still nervous of that, rather than puppy pads can you get a large shallow plastic tray from the garden centre and put in the sort of substrate she will be using outside - turf, gravel or sand? That will make the transition to outside easier when you take her out. You could even store it somewhere foxes can’t get to, and then put it down in the garden for her to use.

 

[London Drummer]

Thanks for your reply Joanne