There are many schools of thought on pullups (just like there are for cloth as infants). You have to try them and see if they suit your needs. Only you know what works. Folks I know with more than one child say potty training is not text-book, and with each kid it was totally different. One niece learned in one day and was 100% potty trained forever, even at night. The other niece just had her own ideas LOL and took forever. I also tried the 'put them in big-girl pants and let them soil themselves and they'll hate it' method. HA! DD could care less that she had pee or poop running down her legs. She could sit in it and never say a word! What seemed to get her into it the most was two things: 1) I told DH to not pee standing up when she was around - the one time he did it totally confused her, so while she was learning, he made sure to lock the door so she was not totally confused. 2) I always took her to potty with me, and I verbalized everything I did. That got her to want to be like Mommy and try to make the sound in the potty.

My son, 9/27/98 is a bit over 3 yrs. He is a big boy (95th percentile) about 43 lbs. We could never find the cloth training pants that would fit him, only pull-ups had the extra large. Alst night we went to cloth underwear, and we made a big deal out of it. They were space man under pants, and they were really cool. He had an accident about 2 hours later. He hid in the play room and pooped in his pants. We took him to the bathroom, and told him that he had to help us clean him up. We told him that this would have been alot easier if he had gone in the potty and not so stinky. We told him that he needed to go on the potty, or we would need to go back to diapers. He was not about to go back to diapers, so he begged for the big boy pants. He stayed dry all night and got up this morning to go potty at 6:30 am. I think we are going to stay with the big boy pants and retire the pull-ups. I am sure that this is a messy road in the future, but, if he knew to go and hide to poop, he knew could have gone to the potty. We sent a few pairs of underwear and pants to pre-school this morning and started our journey. He cried when I left him, this is not like him. He held onto my legs and buried his face. I think maybe he knows that this is the beginning of being a big boy and maybe by moving away from pull-ups will distance us. I am not sure, but I reassured him that I loved him and that I was am very proud of him. I told to he need to go on the potty today, and I waved to him through the window. I hope this works. Jainie

This is what I did with my puppy - she is now 8 months old. I got a puppy play pen and plastic rug protectors to set it on. I put it in the family room since that is where I spend almost all of my day. She would stay in there when I couldn't keep an eye on her and also at night. I decided to sleep in a recliner (and I did it for probably three months, but she was 8 weeks when I got her) and when she would whine during the night, I would take her out with a harness and leash. You don't have to wake a puppy. He will wake you. As for collar and leash, my pup was a bucking bronco when I started getting her use to a collar and leash, so I used a harness for a good long while. I had a cute pink collar for her at first and it didn't take long for her to pull back hard enough to escape her collar and start running in the neighborhood. The harness gave me much more control until she became used to the collar and leash idea. At 12 weeks, I would think the puppy is now due for the second set of shots. I wouldn't think parvo would be a major concern, but I don't have enough experience to really speak to that issue. Have plenty of good things for him to chew on. I lost two pair of shoes to the early stage chewing. LOL And above all, have fun with him. He will grow up quicker than you can imagine. Congratulations!!!

Hello, I understand how frustrating it can be to potty train a new puppy. But remember that your little one is like a two-year old child. If they even know themselves that they need to go potty, they don't know it for long before they have to go ! Here are my words of advice, FWIW ... 1. Feed and walk the puppy on a schedule. Do not let the pup outside and just expect her to potty herself. Go out with her ON A LEASH, stand still, no playing or entertainment, until she pees/poops. Then throw a big party, lots of praise and treats. And THEN she can go play for a bit. This way you make sure that she empties herself before going back into the house. A baby her age will probably need to pee at least once every three hours, so I would set a timer for every two hours just to make sure. And always (just like potty training a child), take her out after waking up and after eating. 2. Clean up any accidents with an enzymatic cleaner like Nature's Miracle or Petastic. Urine smells are persistent, and signal the puppy to PEE HERE ! Enzymatic cleaners are specially formulated to break down the smelly components in urine. 3. Never, ever, ever, ever, EVER spank your puppy. (An aside - NEVER call your puppy over to you, then spank her. Excellent way to teach your puppy that "she calls me, then she spanks me". Trust me, you want your puppy to learn that coming when called only means terrific things. One day, you might just need that emergency recall !). That teaches her to be scared of you when there is pee/poop around. This very quickly teaches dogs that they should sneak away and pee/poop somewhere away from you. And yes, I know that they "look guilty" when you discover their accident. But dogs, even very young puppies, are amazingly good at reading our body language and facial expressions. Let me tell you a little story about this ... I raised my Lab from puppyhood, and have never spanked him, and very rarely even raised my voice at him. One day I came home to find that someone had parked their car across my driveway, and I couldn't get into my garage (I live in a big city where street parking is scarce). I was furious. When I got into my house, I couldn't figure out why my dog was slinking around, looking incredibly guilty and worried. I thought "why is he acting like that ? has he done something that he thinks is naughty ?". I checked the house, everything was in order, and then I started to laugh. He totally read my grumpiness at the parking situation, and was acting anxious and appeasing. That's what dogs do. No different when you get mad about pee/poop in the house. (To finish the story, I burst out laughing at myself when I realised why he was looking all "guilty", and he almost heaved a huge sigh of relief ! and bounced around giving me his typical Labby greeting :-)) 4. I would strongly recommend (if you haven't done this already) enrolling in a puppy kindergarten class. If nothing else, you get other new puppy owners to share your stories with and will commiserate with you, and hopefully an experienced trainer who can help you with potty training and other training questions. Good luck with your pup. I thought my Lab pup was quite quick to pick up on potty training, and I would say that he was 90% reliable by 4.5 months and 100% reliable by 6 months. Remember that you have a young critter that you hopefully will have for the next 15+ years ... try not to get angry with her, she is trying to learn your rules.