Who Is Trained? I can ring the bell!

[Sooner Mom]

I'm wondering how we know if we are really making any progress in the house training process?  Sometimes I think I may be the one trained.  My pup is almost 11 weeks old.  She is currently not having accidents in the house but I have her on a schedule very similar to ones I have seen posted here.  When she is in the house, she is tethered to me and/or I am watching her like a hawk.  My goal has been to minimize the accidents inside and maximize the success outside BUT when do I let her take the wheel? I feel like I am trained and I am forcing her to go out.  Sometimes she looks at me like, please no, don't make me go out there but 95% of the time she is productive when I take her out on our schedule.  She also loves to play outside for extended periods of time.  I feel like she is cuing me less now that she needs to go out than she was before because she is really getting in the groove of going on cue and schedule.  But I feel like if I depended on her to let me know it would be disaster city.  We are using the bells and she is ringing them less.  I am modeling ringing them every time.  I am good at ringing the bells.  Do I just have to give her the reins at some point?  When is that point.....

[Erin]

Hi! It is tough for sure! We were having a lot of accidents inside and a friend who's had a lot of dogs mentioned carrying them from crate to grass (which I'm sure you're doing) and always have a treat so they start associating grass/poty/treat as the way to go! Hope you have success soon! Our issue is barking at all our neighbors!! Ugh!

[Wasseem Sidhom]

I think you should start skipping every other scheduled potty break. Or start delaying the schedule. I don't know how or when Cooper started telling us. But we saw that he would go by the door and sit and scratch.

[Jenny and Cooper]

I was laughing at your comment "I am good at ringing the bells."  LOL!  I felt the EXACT same way you did.  Cooper did great (no accidents) BUT it was because I took him out.  I too, was wondering if I was doing it wrong because technically he wasn't going on his own time.  Now that Cooper's 5.5 months old and I think I can officially say he is potty trained, I can tell you that what you're doing is just fine. Eventually, your doodle WILL go to the door/ring the bell on her own when she needs to go.  I think Cooper started going to the door on his own around 15 weeks or so.  Try extending the time a little bit each day.  Give it another month, you'll see a huge difference.  Just hang in there.  I figured at that point in time, I was getting him trained to know WHERE to go more than WHEN to go. 

[Rosemary (Ro) and Enzo]

^ BINGO! ;)
Consistency is key. 11 weeks is still young. Keep up with what you're doing...it will pay off!

[Missy]

ha ha so glad you have learned to ring the bells!  treat for you!!

you are doing the right thing, now to just keep up the work! 

11 weeks is still pretty young. As others stated, start lengthening your time between potty breaks and less time on the tethering. I would still keep the areas of access in the house very limited. 

You will know you have success when the pup alerts you to go outside EVERY time! 

Keep ringing those bells!  our pup was not into the ringing of the bells, but I made sure to touch his paws to the bells EVERY time we went outside.  As I lengthened the time between potty breaks, he finally at 16 weeks rang the bell with his nose.  treats for EVERYONE! 

warning: your pup will go thru a stage of ringing the bells to go outside to play.  Go with it!  if you don't want to play, then take her out, give the potty commands, if no go, then go right back inside.  You will feel frustrated, but hang in there. We love the bell system and we take them when we travel to people's houses and it works!! ours is 2 years old now.

[Kaitee and Orwell]

The only thing I would add to everyone's sentiments is make her ring the bell after you ring the bell before you go out. That's what I did with my boy and somehow he got potty trained really fast... it's all kind of a blur to me now. After doing that for a week or so, I stopped taking him on scheduled potty breaks because I was just kind of done with the whole thing, lol. I kept a close eye on him still to make sure he didn't have an accident. He had a couple, but I immediately interrupted him, grabbed his collar, rang the bell, and made him complete his business outside. 

I honestly didn't mind cleaning up those couple of accidents. I feel like it trained him quicker. 

[Sheeba Daniel]

Hi Everyone - Thanks for posting this - I wanted to add a question to this discussion - hope that is okay. our puppy is now 4 months old and we have tried bells about 1 month ago and she wasn't quite ready. Now she barks at the door (60%) of the time to be let out but the other 40% I just happen to look over to the door and she is sitting and waiting. She can now stretch it for 1-1.5 hours when she is out of the crate and playing and I would like her to use the bells. I want to try again but mostly she just sees it as a playtoy and chews it and pulls at it. Should I put it away and try again later? Thanks so much. 

[Jenny and Cooper]

I have a few mins to be here and wanted to respond to yours. I tried the bell at the beginning too. We kind of gave up on it and just put it away. Cooper would just sit by the door to let me know he wants out. Just last week I decided to bring the bell back. (Cooper is now 6 months old). He learned it in one day!!! I used cheese (his favorite) to teach it. I would ask him to ring it, gave him cheese, then open the door. He was so funny because he'd ring it again just so he can have another piece of cheese. Lol. On the way back in, he would also ring it thinking he can get a cheese for it too. Lol So I would say yes, you can teach it later. It was actually so much easier at 6 months. You can probably try it at 5 months and see.

[Cammy Todd]

We are in the same situation as you.  We don't have the barking though!  I never thought I would say "I wish my dog would bark"  :)  I've mostly caught Izzy just sitting at the door when she needs to go out.  I have been working on the bells for what seems like forever.  She has rang them on her own maybe twice.  I'm thinking about putting them away and bringing them out again in a couple of weeks.  You could also try working on the "touch" command.  That made the biggest difference for us - started with a treat for touching them on command, then moved to only treating after she touches on command and then goes outside and goes potty.  The final step would be for her to touch on her own when she needs to go out.  We're just not quite there yet! 

[Sooner Mom]

Update: Well, now at over 13 weeks I can say for sure that our pup is crate trained.  She does NOT ever want to go to the bathroom in the crate.  She alerts us loudly, night or day, if she is in the crate that she needs to go out.  She has had only 2 accidents in the house.  Not so sure they were accidents.  It was raining.  She hates going out in the rain.  I think she went inside on purpose.  The pup may be smarter than the owner.  I am no longer tethering her.  I took your advice and tried to give her a little more control /freedom.  I still am not sure the crate trained has transferred to house trained.  I know pups don't really generalize in exactly the same way people do.  She seems conditioned to go when we take her outside 100% of the time.  She seems to understand that were are happy when she goes outside.  She looks to us for praise immediately after she goes each time.  However, even though we are only taking her outside at times that only make sense (after she's been in the crate for an extended period of time, after she's eaten a lot, before we need to put her in the crate etc.) she never and I mean never, is alerting us to go out when she is out of the crate and just playing freely in the very few areas of the house where she is allowed.  I have tried so hard to wait her out and see if she will alert me, but so far not at all.  Earlier, she was sometimes alerting me by whimpering and she was even ringing the bells at least once a day.  Now, I am dutifully continuing to demonstrate/model my amazing bell skills.  She continues to give me the "are you kidding me, you limited human eyes" when I force her to go out before crating her for example.  Last night we put her in the crate at 9 and we woke her up at 6 this morning to go out.  She did not rush out.  (Again, seemed a little annoyed with us for disturbing her but that seemed like a very long time for a puppy to go and I was not interested in cleaning up the crate or the house plus I am trying to get her on a schedule for when I return to work.)  So, I still feel really on edge every time I see her sniffing or going near the edge of the room or too far away from us but if we call her name she just redirects to a toy and doesn't seem to need to go out at all.  I guess I am at a loss.  Honestly, I don't know if she is much farther along than I am giving her credit for or if she is crate trained, yeah, and yard trained, yeah, but not really house trained yet.  She does like to play out in the yard a lot and since we have had a lot of nice weather she is spending a fair amount of time outside.  So, maybe her chances to have an accident or to alert us to go out depending on how you look at it, are just not that great.  

[Sooner Mom]

Well and to make it look like I am the silly human who does not know when the bell needs ringing, today right after I typed the post at the bottom that begins "update" she went right over and proudly rang the bell!  I told you she is smarter than the owner!  I think I need to just let her be in charge of when she goes out.  Of course that makes me nervous.  She seems so young.  I was never a helicopter parent but somehow I am a doodle copter parent!  I think she feels smothered and I can't blame her.  I'll get over it as she builds a track record.  It's been so long since I've trained a puppy to go outside and the last time it did not go well and the dog ended up becoming an outdoor dog.  That's not an option for this pup so she/we have to be successful.  I feel some pressure here to perform, I guess.  She on the other hand keeps looking at me like, I have this all under control.  

[Missy]

wahoo!! It appears to be working!!  I understand the eye thing...we get the looks often too!! 

I too was leary of letting pup have the chance to be in charge, vs. me having to clean up a mess, but it really is the only way to know.  ha ha 

Clearly your pup knows how to ring the bell, and I bet she knows where she needs to do her business.  Just keep her areas of freedom small until you know she has it down pat.  I took me over a year before I relaxed about the housetrained task even though we had no accidents!

It sounds like she is understanding her body and wants to please you which is what it is all about!! Congrats and keep up the god work.