A Question for Dog Owners

My mom is disabled and can't always walk her dog (no yard) so she bought a washable sheepskin pee pad for indoors. Worked great, for a while. Now the dog poops all over the house; only pees on the pad, but poops everywhere. It's gross.

Just train your dog to go outside from day 1. They need to learn that we do our business on grass outside, not get trained to something they use inside and then have to get trained away from it and onto something else all over again. Part of them getting housetrained is learning to hold it. My dog can hold it all day if he had to - does not happen routinely, but he can.

i would get her fully outside trained before you start with that.. otherwise like the others have said it may be confusing to her.. like o0h it is ok to go in the house... the older they get the longer they can hold it .. once my dog was over a year he had absolutely no problem holding it from 730 when i left the house for school until 3 when i got home.. and before that he only had a couple of accidents the first few weeks we had him..
as far as the confusion about where is ok to go thing ill share this with you.. my dog is now ten.. not this past winter but the winter before we got to0ns of snow so he was able to go where ever in the yard that he pleased.. we didnt think anything of it as it was easy to clean off of the snow.. my backyard is almost entirely concrete (we have a pool) except for a smaller area of grass off towards the side of the house for my dog where he has always done his business.. well ever since then after the snow melted he doesnt understand that he cant poop all over the yard.. to this day he still will poop on the concrete and you yell at him and he just moves to another spot.. now wen we walk him he will even just stop on the sidewalk n poop.. its really aggrivating.. that being said she needs a definite in where its ok n where its not

I strongly agree with Jane K. You should only do one or the other. If you are training the dog to go potty outside and then try saying its okay to go potty inside but only in a certain spot will just confuse the poor pup. You then will tell her bad dog if she goes inside but in the wrong spot. I would not do it. If you talked to a trainer they would say the same thing. I also crate trained my puppy. He is just over a year old. He goes outside and only outside. He is a 7 pound havanse. He holds it for 10 hours while I am at work. Crate training would be the best. Dogs will not go potty where they have to sleep. If you do crate train, dont give them a lot of room. Just enough to lay down, stand up and turn around comfortably. If they have too much room they will potty on one side and sleep on the other. Putting your dog in a crate is not mean or cruel, dogs sleep 70% of the day. Also, I do not agree with Leah. My puppy was potty trained within 3 days. At the time he was 10 weeks old and only 1 1/2 pounds. Any size any age puppy can hold it. I work in a puppy store and almost all of the puppies that go home are between 10 and 12 weeks old and the owners have them potty trained in 5-10 days. They can hold it, small chihuahuas to large great danes and all in between.

We have 4 dogs - the first was fully trained to go outside when we got her - she still only goes outside and can hold it for ever.

The second came house trained to pee pads and outside. The 3rd and 4th, we had to teach. They go outside - but when we are gone all day we do still use pee pads in the kitchen - but we buy the 30x36 human under pads instead of the little bitty dog pads.

Our dogs know not to go in the house - but, for us, keeping a pad down ensures we humans and dogs are happy.

Nope. Never bought any kind of piddle or training pads or fake grass or anything. We have a larger dog (a GSD) and just figured it was rather silly to confuse the whole issue. She knows that THAT is done outside, not inside. Period. And she doesn't disappoint us. She would be devastated/embarrassed to "go" in the house.

Being "out a lot" isn't an issue, if your puppy is old enough. If your puppy isn't old enough, then you might want to figure out alternative arrangements for her, because being alone for 8 hours straight or something doesn't seem very kind, regardless of the pottying. Eventually (when she is an adult) I would assume she will be able to hold it for the amount of time you expect to be "out and about" on a regular basis. Being a puppy parent is a lot like being a parent to kiddos.... during certain periods, you just have to suck it up and alter your lifestyle a bit until they grow out of it, just like you would a potty training kiddo.

If you are happy with teaching her that "sometimes" it is ok to "go" in the house, then that is your choice, of course. Just seems kinda confusing, when you are trying to teach her something totally opposite. :/

You should never train a dog to go inside the house, unless you want them going inside the house.

I would definitely NOT get the puppy pad thing. You don't want your dog to feel as if it is OK to pee in the house. That is what you are training her to do, pee in the house, only on a special pad. No way!! We put our dog in a wire kennel, and usually dogs will not pee or poop where they live, which is inside of the kennel. Our dog always holds it. And anyway, if you use the pad, even in the bathroom, I'm sure somewhere down the line you will get a urine smell that won't go away, sort of like a cat box. What happens when you have company? I just wouldn't do it if it was me.

Our mini schnoodle puppy (poodle/schnauzer) has done quite well with one - we had to do it because we frequently take her on our boat with us for long runs.

Our biggest con is that sometimes her butt hangs off it and she misses (not her fault - she's trying to hit the right spot). So I've put a larger rug under it (and pads under the rug).

I would think it could be confusing for some puppies. Ideally it's best to get them outside at first (if that's where they generally go) to give them the right idea. Luckily our schnoodle caught on very quickly - she's pretty smart.

It's been nice for us with all this rain we've had the last few weeks. She absolutely detests wet grass for some reason.

Good luck - hope it works out for you.

I never did that. I have 2 dogs and usually we're home and they can be walked or let out every few hours. Sometimes we're out all day and they may have to hold it - the longest ever is 10 hours (VERY unusual) but more likely 5 or 6 hours like if we're at the beach or something.
A very young puppy cannot hold it so you need to arrange for a neighbor or local teen to come and let your dog out for you if you're going to be out all day.

I would hate cleaning it FAR too much.

Better the old newspaper or incontinence pads than anything that needs to be washed!!!

We bought one (pre doggie door installation), but our dog refused to use it. But she wasn't a puppy, we acquired her at 2 years of age. I imagine you'd have better luck training a puppy with it. It's the cleaning of said fake grass patch that I've read can be disgusting :(

I wouldn't spend the money on it. She'll be potty trained by being outside with you guys this summer. You wouldn't get enough use out of it this time of year.

Why don't you get a doggie door? We have one and my dogs are big. they love it, they can go in an out as they wish. In fact, it calmed my anxiety ridden dog sown so much cause he knew that he can come and go when he pleases.