How to potty/pee train puppy in 4B house

Hi and Welcome!

Good advice from everyone.

What you want to do is "set her up for success" (and yourselves too) by reducing her chances for making mistakes.
If she's not directly under your supervision while eating, playing, training, she needs to be kept safely out of trouble, whether eliminating in the wrong place or getting hold of something potentially dangerous, until she earns more freedom in the home.

She will be 6 months or older before her neuromuscular system is mature enough to actually recognize the need to go and to be able to hold it long enough to communicate her need to you. She may recognize the feeling of needing to go before that, but it will be longer before she can actually wait.

The exercise pen doesn't need to be very big for a toy but it's somewhere she can be safely while still in the living area with you while you're working. If you're crate training her you could combine the two with something like this but scaled to your available area.



Remember too that she'll need to be taken to the pad every hour and given the chance to go, as well as after every activity. Activities include waking up, playing, eating, drinking, training, basically after any movement or intake.

I understand the thought behind multiple pads but it's actually confusing for her. You want to give one, possibly two places and help her learn them by taking her to them. Don't just hope she'll find it in time.

If she were a human, you wouldn't expect her to know to crawl to a bathroom so you need to show her every time .

Just as a question, are the pee pads out of necessity or convenience?

An additional piece of information since you didn't say whether you have previous experience with toy poodles is to learn the signs of hypoglycemia. This can be deadly serious in a very, very short time.

And many other new puppy resources here

Lots of good advice here, and I love RoseNpoos pictures of x pen setups (visual learner alert!).

My only comment (for us all) is an observation about generally every first time puppy owner ever: a lack of understanding that the puppy can't just run about the home unsupervised for many months and possibly for the whole entire first year of life- or longer for some rapscallions. That it is not loving kindness to allow an untrained dog full run of your home.

It is loving and kind and good animal husbandry to train your dog using tools such as tethering, confinement, one-on-one attention- in addition to what is more traditionally thought of as dog training. Hopefully by year one or three the dog has matured and been trained into the adult dog of your dreams. Crates, x pens, leashes are not instruments of torture unless misused. Correctly used they provide structure and support training, leading to success.

Zoeydec, welcome to puppyhood! You are on a delightful learning path, and not unusual at all in not knowing some of the puppy management things. Here you are asking questions, and getting good answers. Well done! May you have many happy years with your poodle.