House training rescue

[stillchasingdereksheppard]

Hello all,

Here for some advice regarding our new rescue puppy. Hes a little over 6 months and hasnt ever lived in a house before.
He arrived on 10th May and hes a real sweetie. He is a very intelligent dog and is keen to learn. His recall is really coming on and we're getting there with basic commands like 'sit' and 'wait' and 'no'.
No real issues so far except for standard puppy like behaviours ( mouthing / jumping up when excited) but he responds really well to boundaries and is really getting there.

We have 4 hours of 1-1 dog training coming up to assist. We will start this end of next month when he has been here 6 weeks.

The only real issue we are having is toilet training. We are basically just being vigilant. If he goes inside im just saying 'wee wee outside' and taking him out but otherwise no reaction, just clearing up the mess. With regular taking him outside and picking up on his cues we are mostly avoiding accidents and im rewarding all outside toileting with a fav treat.

We have crate trained him so hes dry if hes left as hes in the crate. So overnight and short times like schools runs etc not an issue.

3 weeks in and if distracted with kids and miss cues etc he will just go inside. Sometimes will take him out and he won't go and then will go almost immediately when we come back in.

How do I move forwards with this training? Is it just time or is there something else I should be doing? If it's just time then I am happy to continue as long as he needs i just want to make sure im doing the right things to support him learning correctly.

Have tried puppy pads but it didn't really help and seemed to just confuse him more.

Looking forward to all your wisdom.

I could have written your post a couple of years ago, except our dog was 9 months when we got him and we didn't crate train. It seemed that success/failure of weeing outside was down to whether we happened to be inside or outside when his bladder was full to bursting! It was compounded by the fact our dog only did max. three or four wees in a 24-hour period (no instinct to scent mark), so fewer opportunities to reinforce the outside weeing.

It sounds like you are doing everything right so it could be just a case of time. It was about 3 months before our dog was reliably housetrained, and we stopped accompanying him on his last visit into the garden to make sure a wee was done before bed.

He's now just like any other housetrained dog, we don't think about it, let him out into the garden and leave him to it!

I think you’re doing it right, it will just take time! Out every hour or two to begin with, don’t come in until he’s done a wee, is what I did. They do pick it up quickly!

This is roughly what we are doing.

Of course as he is a rescue im expecting 3-6 months of adjustment period at the minimum and it's early days.

Reassuring to hear we seem to be doing the right things.

I take him out first and last thing and then after sleeps / play time etc or just every hour or hour and a half!

Weirdly we are sorted on poops! He goes 3 times a day at the moment, first thing, around noon and in the evening. The routine/ predicableness of this has helped and he gets we go outside for that so just seems to be the wee he will do wherever he is.

Thankfully at the moment it's easy to do lots of garden time etc as the weather has been favorable mostly.

Fingers crossed he gets the hang of it before the end of summer and i don't have to buy a brolly!