OK I have been majorly neglectful of this blog but these puppies are soooo much more interesting than typing so it keeps sliding off the bottom of my to-do list.
That said, I'll get caught up in a bunch of posts all at once.
The past few days have seen 100% of indoor potties on the papers, and a statistically significant number of outdoor potties as well. This has been so successful that I decided I would describe exactly what I did in case anyone is interested in trying it themselves. I have no idea who is reading this blog these days so please excuse me if none of this is interesting to you, and skip to the next post.
The purpose of all this is to maximize the pups' natural instinct to potty away from the nest. I had read that pups as young as 3 weeks would try to leave their bedding to pee, and wanted to see how far we could go with this!
1. I bought a long (6' x 15') piece of linoleum on sale at the hardware store, and built the nest box (4' square) with no floor. I placed the box, which was heavy enough not to move around, on one corner of the linoleum, so that the single piece was both the box floor and a covering to protect my apartment's wooden flooring from soil. The box has a gate in the front that can be folded down, so that it is either 8" high or 16" high, depending on the gate.
2. The nest box had papers on the floor and, on top of that, a faux sheepskin blanket in the back. This blanket worked really well because, if they peed on it, the pee went through the blanket into the papers, keeping the puppies dry.
3. I checked the papers often and removed soiled ones ASAP, and de-scented the linoleum underneath with an enzymatic dog mess cleaner - except I usually left a little bit of pee smell on the front edge of the box to encourage them to pee there. I used the Wee-Wee brand cleaner, which smells better than Nature's Miracle, but it leaves a slightly sticky residue so I would also wipe it down with vinegar and water every few days to keep the linoleum from getting gross.
4. When they got old enough to climb over the gate, I folded it up to be higher, and then only let them out when I was playing with them. I surrounded the linoleum with an x-pen. (I made use of the walls in my room to make the space bigger. You might need two x-pens to enclose such a large space.) During this time I observed they peed more and more on the front papers and less and less on the blanket. I introduced a puppy pad with a plastic holding tray (so Trinity wouldn't nest in it) at this time. I also placed pads at the farthest edge of the linoleum.
5. When I noticed the puppies preferring to potty on the pads outside of the box, I started leaving the box open all the time. I removed the pee pad that was inside the box and now only kept pee pads outside, two pads at the far edge and one pad nearer the box (in case they couldn't make it to the far pads). IMMEDIATELY they ceased to pee in the nest!
6. To help them know where to potty, I always cleaned up accidents ASAP with the enzymatic cleaner. Once a day, I also cleaned the entire linoleum with that cleaner to remove any trace smells. Cleaning the floor frequently and thoroughly with the enzyme cleaner was vitally important, because if I was busy or absent and a pee was left too long, the pups would track the smell all over and then no longer be able to find their way to the pads to pee, and start peeing everywhere. I also removed pee pads once they had several pees on them and no longer felt dry - the pups don't like them once they are too dirty.
6. When they had gained enough control to have almost no accidents, I stopped putting the pee pad that was near the nest. Now all pads are at the far end of the nest.
They still occasionally miss the pads a little, like peeing a few inches off, but they try! At first, they would not be able to poop on the pads because they would scoot off before they were done, but as their balance improves, they are able to stay on the pads even to poop.
I have now placed their kennels inside the nest box, to reinforce the kennel's status as a den and a place to be kept free of pee. We're just starting kennel training, giving them their meals in the kennel and enclosing them for a minute or two at a time - not so long that they fuss. All's going well!
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