How long did it take you to get him fully trained and what method did you use?
Hi Salsacookies-- Worm was pretty housetrained after 1 month, and fully trained by 1 1/2 months after we got him. He was 5 1/2 months at that point.
(Mikey, you should have met Worm at that time...)
I was thinking more to see what useful info I can share...
Now when I think back, he may have had a head start at his breeders. He and 15-16 bassets (mostly pups from his own and other litters, as well as a couple adults) all lived together in one area. They were apparently supposed to go bathroom farther down on the concrete, away from their sleeping area. His breeder said that he was learning and was doing that already, because the older dogs were peeing there. But he was otherwise unsupervised and not housetrained by anyone, per se. ie, he could have peed in their sleeping spot and nobody (except dogs) would have reprimanded him. I do find that Worm is good about peeing where other dogs pee. And he's good about doing #1 and #2 in the same spots outside. At 8 months now, I just bring him to the spot and he goes right away. Does your dog has pee spots and #2 spots where she likes to go?
Sounds like your puppy does go outside, but also goes when you come back in too... hmmm, we never had that issue with Worm. He emptied everything outside, so I don't know what to say about that.
I guess we just used the method of keeping an eagle's eye on him (Mikey's right, that "good housetraining" might just be "good supervision.") We were tired from following him everywhere that first 1 1/2 months, but I think it paid off in the following ways: 1. like I posted before, it was really good when we interrupted him in the middle of a pee, took him outside to the pee spot, and then he finished his business. helped him to understand what to do. (but that stinker, sometimes it was hard to tell that's what he was doing until it was too late. he still squats like the females, so when he pees, it just looks like prolonged sitting.. easy to miss). 2. we were always able to stop him from chewing bad stuff because we were watching him so closely. we have not had major problems with him chewing things like furniture, etc. Nowadays, I can watch him a lot less, because I am able to trust that he won't go to the bathroom. He's the one who rings the bell when he wants to go.
Even when we went camping recently, I took him to the perimeter of the campsite to pee as soon as we got there. After that, he would always go back there to pee. He was on a long lead, and when he needed to go #1 or #2, he would whine to tell us he needed to go. So he never went in our campsite, even though it was a very grassy area. Good dog.
Something else interesting: Took him to daycare this week, and they recorded him peeing 7 times (!) in 8 hours. That tells me he would naturally like to pee more than he does when he's with me. He holds it. Nowadays, when awake, he wants to go out to pee every 2 hrs, roughly. But when we were housetraining, we would have to take him out every hour when awake, or else he would have an accident. (believe me, i was quite bitter at times. but if i didn't there would be an accident).
I'm ok taking him out every 2 hrs now when he's awake. Also because he stays in his crate for 4-6 hrs at a time and doesn't pee or mess up his crate (he's never done that). And he sleeps through the night without needing to go pee (8-10 hrs).
What else? we don't use puppy pads or newspapers or anything like that. I decided it would be too confusing for him. We basically send him the message-- it's not ok to pee ANYwhere in our home at anytime.
How's the housetraining going with your puppy now?
