Question:
I’ve got a 14 week old lab puppy that I’m trying to housetrain. I didn’t use a crate but do confine him to the kitchen during the day while I’m at work. When I come home at lunch and after work he’s usually always urinated on the newspapers I’ve left out. Is this normal? How long does it usually take until his bladder can hold for more than 4 hours at a stretch?
Response:
> I’ve got a 14 week old lab puppy that I’m trying to housetrain. I didn’t > use a crate but do confine him to the kitchen during the day while I’m > at work. When I come home at lunch and after work he’s usually always > urinated on the newspapers I’ve left out. > Is this normal? How long does it usually take until his bladder can hold > for more than 4 hours at a stretch?
All sounds normal to me. However, your puppy is establishing habits that are gonna be hard to change. Namely, he is comfortably being able to relieve himself in the house whenever he pleases. I’m no expert, but given your puppies current choices, I see no reason to believe he would ever become housebroken. Ask yourself why he would see any reason to hold it? If he can urinate in one area of the kitchen at will and sleep elsewhere, then there is no reason to believe he is going to spontaneously decide that enduring the mild discomfort of bladder pressure until you come home is a better alternative. If you were able to supervise him round-the-clock, you could probably housebreak him without a crate with very little difficulty. This not being the case, a crate or other smaller confined location deserves some more consideration. A puppy in a crate still gets to decide if and when they will urinate. But, by being in a crate, there are some negative consequences associated with urinating at will. If you strongly object to the crate, then perhaps others here can offer some alternatives. At the beginning of this summer, my neighbor and I each got a puppy within a few days of eachother (they saw mine and wanted one). Mine was housebroken within about two weeks (no, he couldn’t hold it all day). Theirs continued having problems ’till the end of the summer. They said the crate seemed cruel. But, after hearing them yelling and becoming frustrated with their puppy in the wee hours of the night, I have to wonder what their idea of cruel was. Alan
Response:
When we first got our Lab puppy, we had papers out during the day and the crate door open (we felt bad). After a week, we read somewhere that it confuses the puppy to do both paper training (which is unintentially what we were doing during the day) and housebreaking. The book we read said to pick whichever is the method that you ultimatly want to live with, and do only that. The second week he pee’d in his crate each day, but from week three on, he was essentially housebroken. When he were home and he was out of the crate, we still watched him closely for signs and took him out often, but I think the book we read was right. Since you can not reason with a puppy, you sort of need to show himher what you want them to do, along with work with their natural instincts. If we had continued laying out the papers, I can imagine that he would have continued using them. Good luck -Beth
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