Experienced dog owners - Advice on training my puppy please

[plum100]

Morning all. I wondered if i could have help with housetraining my 11 weekk old shihtzu bitch please. Eveything i read on the internet is so contradictory i dont know if what i am doing is correct.
She is crated at night, has been since we got her two weeks ago and was at the house we got her from. The problem is she poos in the crate , whether we leave her for 40 mins or overnight, and then she walks all in it. The crate is big - she has a small round furry bed and you could fit that in it twice. At night she just has paper and a blanket in there, we tried a teddy and bed but they got covered in poo. She settles down after maybe 5 minutes now at night time and we dont hear her in the night, however she could well wake up. During the day if she falls asleep we put her in her crate, feed her in it, sit next to it and give her treats in it etc so she assoxiates it with a good place. Her bed goes in there during the day. She never chooses to go to her bed in there.
Toiletting during the day is constantly, and i mean contantly watching her , and taking her outdoors frequently, a cue word and lots of praise and fresh chicken , only to be uses for toiletting. Even if i have to go
The loo someone else has to go on puppy watch!!! She hasnt really got it, its hit or miss, sometimes she goes straight away, othertimes she comes in and does it. Its very difficult as all the books say watch for sniffing but she spends all her time sniffing! Also her legs are about 2 inches long and you cant tell if shes squatting!
So my concern is do i continue to crate or not? Should i perserve or amd i doing more damage? I have read that the cage should be just big enough for them to lie down and turn around in, but i have also read that you should put paper down one end so they can go toilet. I coukd make it smaller.
I have read that you should come down to them in the night - i have read you shouldnt. Hubby stays up till 12 and then i get up at 6 to her ahe is crated for 6 hours.
I have read you shouldnt put any paper down for them so they learn to hold it, yet if you dont come down to them how can they hold it?
I thought crate training waa meant to speed up the housetraining process but if my pooch continues to poo in it am i teaching her that that is what you do? Or will she get better in time?
I am also
Concerned that she is pooing in distress, as i say its everytime she is left in there. So would i be better opening her door leaving her bed in there and leaving a pad out by the back door.

Also all this watching them lark is ok, but i also read you shouldnt be with them all the time , they need to learn to be alone - but i need to catch her wees!!
Thank you if you hve got this far!!! I
Not expecting my pup to be housetrained until she is 6 mths - then i cannot be disappointed! She is hard work but then all puppies are and its nothing i wasnt expecting im just worried incase im making things worse.
So funny- 11 yrs ago i was on mumsnet asking foe new born baby advice - and here i am agsin withy new baby!!!!

[insanityscatching]

We have a shih tzu cross who was very easily house trained. We've never had a crate so did it like this. No papers or puppy pads in the house because the dog needs to know he toilets outside. Then every 30 minutes take him outside.
In the beginning when you catch them peeing you give them a word which will become their command. For Eric it was pee pee in a sing song voice (but changed it to "quickly" because I felt a prat outside the garden) So dog pees, you give the word and reward. In days Eric was toileting on command when I took him out.
If you take puppy out and she doesn't pee,pick her up carry her round inside for five minutes and then go back outside and try again. By picking her up you don't give her a chance to fail.
Puppies need to toilet after eating, drinking, sleeping, training, playing as well so these times might well be extras to the every thirty minutes.Eric never messed overnight but like you he only did 6 hours when he was small.
It does feel a bit relentless at first but Eric was trained in less than a fortnight and we've had no accidents since.
I found having a puppy much more difficult than having a baby tbh they are mobile have teeth like needles and they don't speak the same language thankfully they grow up much quicker though

[tabulahrasa]

Mine is crate trained...I honestly don't think it is all that useful for housetraining tbh, useful as somewhere to put him so he won't chew electricity cables (still btw, he's 3, lol) and easier to clean when he had an accident than unexpected puddles, but, when he was tiny, if he needed to go he needed to go whether he was loose or in his crate.

I found watching for signs he needed a bit pointless as well, you got literally a split second - which led to rushing towards an already peeling puppy, which is not good for housetraining.

So I just did it on a schedule, after food, play or sleep and every 20 minutes or so he was awake between those. That way you're catching the majority outside and being able to reward it.

[Floralnomad]

We did the same as insanity with ours and he was trained quite quickly , although we didn't crate we did confine overnight by use of stair gates although it was quite a large area .

[tabulahrasa]

Oh and...yes some puppies get the hang of it in two weeks, some take much longer - it's like children really, it just takes as long as it takes.

Mine was 16 weeks old before he was housetrained...he was almost there for about 3 or 4 weeks before that, but 16 weeks was when we stopped getting any accidents (barring illness).

[plum100]

Thanks all - so do you think i should abandon the crate?

[plum100]

Thanks potap i did wonder i thats the case but im thinking she will just poo on her bed

[rhetorician]

plum we had same issue with a crate that was too big - she would poo on the newspaper on the other side. We put a box in (one of the kids toys boxes upsidedown) and she has been fine since. She is 11 weeks, and more or less housetrained, bar the occasional accident (multiply, if raining!). She slept in crate last night from 11-6, and I let her out at 6 to pee and poo, and then to play...

[Floralnomad]

Ultimately whether you keep the crate probably depends on whether you intend to keep it long term , if you do it's probably worth carrying on now and dividing it ,if you don't want it long term you may as well ditch it now and use another form of containment / keep in one room overnight . I will say that IME it's a myth that dogs don't poo / pee in their beds , some do . Also when my boy was a pup he was asleep on the armchair one evening and when I went to wake him up for bed he was soaked where he had peed in his sleep and then carried on sleeping in it , they really are just like babies some don't like being wet / dirty and some just sleep through it all oblivious .

[sparechange]

Agree that your crate is too big, and she doesn't see it as her 'den'. And you are leaving her in there too long overnight...

Are you cleaning it really, really thoroughly each morning? Because she may well now have made the association between toilet smells in there and going, in which case, she thinks she is toilet trained!

But you just need to stick with what you are doing. Some dogs just take longer to get it. If she was distressed, I would expect her to be crying for you, or making some sort of noise. She isn't, because she is happy to go in her crate.

I would split her crate in half with an old towel or sheet taped or strung up somehow, so there is only space for her bed.
And I would be setting an alarm for 3am for the next few nights to get her up and out to go to the toilet, so she isn't 'forced' to go inside the crate.

What times are you feeding her and how many times a day? Puppies (especially little breeds) should have a bit of a one-in, one-out digestive system, so should be pooing quite soon after meal times. You could start tweaking her meal times a bit as well...

[Tinktheterrible]

Imo dogs should not be kept in cages. Seeing Dogs in crates gives me the shivers, I think they need more freedom than that.
Some puppies do just poo overnight up until they grow out of it. Ime using a puppy pad by the back door is a good short term fix. Then they won't tread in it because they can get away. if you think removing the crate will create a problem then yes, leave the door open. Please don't just keep locking her in there at night surrounded by her own shit, it can't be pleasant for her.

[rhetorician]

tink I suspect the crate issue is divisive in the dog world! My puppy is in one because that's what she was used to before we got her, and it works for our household. I think it's better to crate her for short periods in a busy household. If she was distressed in any way by it, I wouldn't do it

[plum100]

Thanks everyone , i think i will try and makw the crate smaller tnte. She is last fed at 5pm , and she never poos after her meals , its always at random times! Sparechange thats what im concerned about - that she assoviates her crate with pooing

[Tinktheterrible]

Agreed rhetorician and tbh I retract all advice, my own bastard darling doggie has just embarrassed me completely in front of an entire campsite so I am obviously not the expert I thought I was yesterday! In fact puppy prison seems a rather good idea at the moment! good luck op.

[rhetorician]

OOH tink what did he do? I am having a bad day in the puppy world; wondering why I did it, and if someone else can have her

[sparechange]

Tink
In the wild, dogs have dens. Small puppies live in dens with their mums, who make them stay in there while they go hunting.
Obviously cages have connotations in human worlds, but having somewhere den-like is very natural to a dog, and being told to stay in it is also natural. A crate is only cruel if it is used for excessive periods of time, or as a punishment.
My dogs have always had their crates as their safe place when they want some time out. They can be called out but not disturbed when they are in there. We had to get rid of the crate after a while because it took up too much space in our kitchen, but when we go to friends' houses with crates, sparedog makes a beeline for it and goes for a sleep