Puppy pooping only at night???

[Gracie123]

We have a beautiful 15 week old puppy who is really an absolute dream. He was house broken within about 6 hours of coming home with us, loves his crate, walks nicely on his leash and genuinely seems intelligent and eager to please

HOWEVER :- everything I have read about crate training suggested that he'd need to go to the toilet within one hour of eating. This hasn't been the case.

In fact, he doesn't poop hardly at all in the day, but does wake us up at night to go out.

His schedule goes like this:
6am play outside and poops
7am breakfast
7:30 crate
8am outside and poops
12pm lunch
4pm dinner
8pm poop
10pm poop
2am poop

Am I doing something wrong? Why does he only need to poop in the night?
I've tried sitting outside with him all day today, so he could go freely whenever he wants to, but he doesn't go.

He's doing so well to wake us up and get outside when he needs to go, but I'd sort of hoped he'd be sleeping through by now... (We got him at 10.5 weeks by the way).

We had similar issue with our 10 week old puppy.
I changed her feeding schedule and it cleared up the same day. Here's what i did in case you want to try it.

Measure out entire food for the day (mix of fresh, dried and, chew and training treats).

7am. Big breakfast.
11am. Smaller lunch.
2.30pm. Small dinner.
3pm. Chew treat.

After that, nothing to eat. Only fresh water.
Following this schedule, my puppy went from pooing in the same way yours does, to pooing once in late afternoon and once at around 8pm.

Hope that helps!

What exercise does he get after lunch and dinner? He is obviously not pooping enough each time.
To have a meal at 12, then 4, and not poop until 8, 10 and 2, suggests lack of full on exercise to get the bowels moving properly.

So he eats 3 times a day and poops 5 times. Are you feeding him too much, I wonder.?

Thank you both.

I'm going to try changing up the feeding schedule. I struggle to get him to play in the afternoons to be honest. He has crazy amounts of energy first thing in the morning, play 'fetch' etc a lot with my kids all morning, then by the afternoon he just wants to sun bathe. If you throw a ball he looks at it, looks at you and then lies down with a heavy sigh!

He does then get a burst of energy around 7pm which ties in with what you were saying about him not exercising enough on full bowels.

Hopefully if I feed him more in the morning when he is still bouncy and playful that will improve things.

You're welcome. Let us know how it goes!
Lack of sleep can be so debilitating so best of luck!

Good luck.

Thank you guys so much! He pooped within an hour of each meal, and once again at 7:30pm, but not in the night.

Cannot believe how easy a fix that was and I didn't know. I just assumed all his meals should be evenly spaced

Oh, well done. That is how it should be at his age. But they normally do an extra one in the morning after the longest sleep.
It will get easier when he is on 2 meals a day. My adult dogs - small types-, I fed them only once a day. < although DH couldn't resist being popular at meal times and giving them bits off his plate!>

I'm so glad!!!