Puppy peeing at night-any ideas please from those who didn’t crate train

[Woody479]

Pup is 18 weeks old. We’ve had him from 10 weeks. He sleeps in the spare bedroom. Initially he was in a pen with a puppy pad at one end. We had every intention of taking him outside when he woke during the night but we don’t hear a peep out of him. The run up to Christmas was really difficult for us (I won’t go into detail but lots of ill health, work problems etc etc) we were all running on empty and the full night’s sleep kept us all going. I was concerned about letting him use the pads over night but everyone I spoke to in real life said he’ll eventually be able to hold it and will stop using them. I was happy to accept this advice!

Now all the additional life stresses have eased I’m worried that we’ve fucked up. He’s now not in his pen (soon learned how to escape). He’s in the spare room and we come down in the morning to a pee and a poo on the pad.

He’s 100% housetrained during the day.

I don’t know what to do really. Carry on as we are and hope that he’ll just grow out of it? Start taking him out during the night but how do I know when to do that if he doesn’t make any noise?

I am reluctant to get up in the night. DS has issues with sleep and it will be a nightmare trying to settle him back as it’ll disturb him and he doesn’t do well on broken sleep.

Tbh I don’t really have an issue with binning the puppy pad every morning when he’s so good during the day but I feel like I’m not doing my best by him.

Any thought or just some reassurance? Have any of you had puppies that just out grew going to the toilet during the night? Many thanks.

I used to get up at midnight, to check if pup needed a wee after last wee at 10.
It's only me here, one child, and cats.
I'd just bite the bullet and get up.
Your pup will get used to having a visit at 12. Take him out, stay outside till he does a wee.

In time he'll be able to hold it till 5.

You need to stay up later, ie 11.30 and make that the last pee of the day.

If you do that he shouldn’t need again until early morning. Absolutely no need to set the alarm for during the night.

The books say that, as a rule of thumb, puppies can hold their bladders for an hour for each month of their age during the night (so an eight week old brand new puppy, you should be setting your alarm maximum of two hourly during the night for wees, 16 week olds, approx 4 hrly etc). Lots of the modern books and websites are pretty clear on this, so I don’t quite know how you’ve missed it.

Yours is 18wks, so I’d be going with the 4hrly option. Set it 4hrs after his bedtime wee/poo. Mine is 14wks and a large breed, so I wonder if his bladder capacity is a bit better than the little ones, he is now going 4hrs 45mins at night. We’ve slowly increased it, in 5 mins increments every other night if we’ve gone downstairs and he hasn’t been out of his bed and keen to go. He does get up and go to the loo but he has to be persuaded, so we’ve pushed the alarm back bit by bit to see if he can manage it. So far, so good. If he can’t, we just put it back and try again in a few nights’ time if he starts to show signs of needing to be persuaded out of bed again.

OP if getting up in the middle of the night is going to be really tricky for you try what worked for us: one of us stayed up late (like 11.30/12 - we are generally in bed at nine!!) to do a very late, last-pee-before-bed, and then the other one would be on "earlies" (maybe your husband, as he's already getting up at 5). That might be worth a try first as you just might find that shortening the time you are asking pup to hang by an hour or two is enough. Worth a try.

Our second puppy had a tiny bladder and we found that system easier (and less disruptive to sleep) than getting up at 2 in the morning or whatever.

You can’t expect him to hold it all night, he’s just a baby. Mine was six months before she was mature enough for that. If he’s downstairs he can’t ask you to let him out so he needs an alternative. Eventually he’ll stop using the pad. More intelligent breeds will probably grasp it sooner.