Early Potty Training

Ember & Super Cooper

​These days there really are some amazing resources available to prospective and active breeders to enrich their breeding programs and puppies. However, we haven’t seen much coverage of: Early Potty Training. So, this is where we would like to start. Hopefully, future columns will be produced based on your request(s).

​​Over the years Jenna and I have used a range of systems; some have worked better than others… over the past several litters, we have homed in on one system, and made refinements in both the equipment, method, and management which have delivered better, and better results for our puppy clients. To spare you the history of this evolution, we’ll delve right into where we are, and how we do it.

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Rye & Sage's litter

Whelping Box: Part 1
Initially, one might think there isn’t much to do with days-old pups, as their mother does most, if not all, of the heavy lifting. We still have an important role to play! As a point of reference, the whelping box we use for our Drents is approximately 4’x4’. We have found the use of thick synthetic fleece (also known as VetFleece), with super absorbent Lennypads underneath to be highly effective. The fleece sets the stage from day one by wicking liquids down and away from the puppies, keeping them clean, dry and warm. While the bedding area the puppies contact will almost always feel dry to touch, their bedding will still need to be changed every 24 hours or so. Don’t let the fleece fool you, the pad underneath will be soaked! Our mantra for the whole time we have the pups, “When in doubt, change it out”.

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Baby Drents & our set up

​Whelping Box: Part 2
The exact timing varies from litter to litter, however, once the pups are getting mobile and doing their business more and more on their own, this is your sign it’s time to change things up. This is when we introduce disposable potty pads and cover at least a third of the whelping box with them. You can usually get about this much covered while still leaving mom space to maneuver around. Initially, we simply cover their normal bedding and tuck the edges of the pads under the frame of the whelping box to help deter the pups from pulling at the pads. The expectations here are pretty low, but when you approach the box and the pups get woke up and excited, prompting the need to potty. Simply lift them onto the pads and praise them when they go. For the record, they will be pretty indiscriminate where they go, and that’s okay. It is important to note that the disposable pads are slick to the pups, and this lack of traction can be a hinderance. Also, these young pups have no control over their bladder. They go when they need to go. But in time they will start choosing to not do their business in the non-potty pad area more and more. Some pups will adapt quicker, some slower. We still strip out and clean their normal bedding every 24 hours, and we change out the potty pads as needed, ideally leaving a lightly soiled pad in play as that tends to attract them to potty in the “dirty” area.

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Baby Sage

​Whelping Box: Part 3
At a certain point, your puppies will be getting bigger and need more space to play and sleep, and the potty area will begin to seem too big for them for the size of their area. If they are using it pretty well, you may begin experimenting with making the potty area slightly smaller by a few inches. Our pups tend to stay in this configuration until they are about 4-weeks of age. While you want to guard against having your puppies confined in an area too small, giving them an area too big runs contrary to their potty training. This “in-between” time is short, generally less than a week and is more or less dependent on the size of the litter. When in doubt an extra day in the tight quarters is probably right.

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Gigi, the Spinone

​1st expansion: Phase 1
This is when our pups get their first big change in physical living quarters and their area is doubled. From 4’x4’ to 4’x8’. The new added area is 100% potty zone and this is when our potty trays with artificial turf are introduced. The trays are available via Amazon and are amazing! The trays consist of a simple ‘rabbit tray’ you put potty pads in, with made to size grates that fit over the pads, then covered by thick artificial turf with drainage holes.

The added area not covered by the tray/turf systems needs to be covered with disposable potty pads, all the way up to (and under) their normal bedding, which would now be in the original whelping box space. You will find that the puppies readily take to the grass mats – it’s pretty amazing. Still it will take time for full adoption, and many will get a paw on the pad, and the rear end will not be on… it still counts, as we have been informed by their Union Representative, Ila.

Initially, do not create a gap between potty pads and living area. This gap is made of lava and will not likely be crossed and cause the pups to begin soiling their living area. Make no mistake, there will still be liquid mistakes made in the living area, in particular along the edge of the potty area. As you might have expected, the 24 hour strip out/clean out rule still applies to their bedding and potty trays.
Grass mat & potty tray maintenance: poops can be picked up as needed using toilet paper and flushed away. After 24 hours, the grass mats will need to be hauled out, potty pads inspected and replaced as needed. We use Rescue Veterinary Disinfectant to clean the trays, grates, and flooring areas as needed. Fresh grass mats are installed, and you’re off to the races. The soiled grass mats are cleaned using a little bit of dish soap, and high-pressure water, top and bottom. Then doused with a generous application of Nature’s Miricle Urine Destroyer, given a light scrub in, then hung in a sunny area to drain and dry. Our current mats have seen four litters and they do not stink, still!

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Tule & her Donut litter

​1st expansion: Phase 2
By now you have a well-established routine for your pups, and their natural cycles. If you are really clever, you can add in shuttling them outside prior to their morning or afternoon potty time: this is pro-level stuff here and can be a lot to juggle.
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What is easy, is to create the potty zone gap. At first, try only an inch and see how it goes. If suddenly the puppies bulk at crossing the lava zone, shrink it up to just a sliver. Regardless of where your litter starts, every other day, you will make the gap slightly larger. If the pups begin using the “lava zone”, but not the grass mats, the gap became too big too fast for them. Remember the pups are the ones who decide the pace of this action. Simply reverse course and hold the old gap for another day or two before resuming enlarging it again.
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During this time, you will need a second temporary area to hold your pups during tear out and clean up. We either build a side pen or close them off in our kitchen. Ideally, you can put them on an extra-large whelping mat with a waterproof backing, with an extra, clean, ready-to-use potty tray.
The pups will have days that are better than others, but generally speaking they will be drawn to use the grass mats because of the traction they offer. Very quickly all of their poops will be on the grass mats, and their pees will soon follow.

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Powder & the Berrypatch. Can you spot Ila?

​2nd expansion and beyond:
Whelping box expansions are always needed. Giving the growing pups adequate space helps to reduce stress within the litter. Additionally, there are a myriad of things to offer and do within the whelping box to help in the development of the puppies. However those are outside the scope of this article, and great fodder for another! Since we are focused on early potty training here, rapid expansion tends to run contrary to developing the habit of moving away from their living space to an area that is not just accessible but inviting to go potty.
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Much like before, the space will become more and more cramped with the growth of the pups and you will be tempted to expand again. Again, we will delay the expansion based on the puppies use of the potty trays. Their living area will become slightly congested, but not so much that one or more pups start lounging on the grass mats. Remember, at this point they really just need room to sleep and maybe do a bit of play. That being said, you may find that your litter will use one tray almost exclusively and leave the other alone. If a pup is lounging on the “clean” tray, don’t fret.

Once they are ready for more space, we have a wide range of solutions available to us. But typically, we add two half-panels enlarging their space to approximately 6’x8’. This is when their living and play area really gets a boost, and there is room to add a small kennel, etc. Still, it is very important to delineate the living area from the potty area. Do NOT put a kennel box, bedding, or play area immediately adjacent to the potty area. If they can step out of a kennel or get out of a bed onto the potty area within a step or two, it's too close. The association we want to continue to build on is for the puppy to move away from living areas, to appropriate potty areas.
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During this phase we tend to see, if we have forgotten to put the extra tray in the temporary pen, it isn’t uncommon to have a puppy get fussy. We can open the pen, and allow the puppy to either go outside, or have access to their main pen and they go to the newly installed potty tray and immediately go or go outside and use the potty tray we forgot to bring in that is stored adjacent to our back door.

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It must be Wednesday - nail day!

​With weather permitting, you can even design a chute of sorts from pen to your yard and call them through to the great outdoors to further build the association of going out to potty.
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Most litters will need a third and possibly a fourth expansion. Again, we follow the same parameters on expanding their living space. Once it becomes a little bit congested and starts getting tight, but tension within the litter hasn’t escalated, it is time to add space. It's important to note here that by the end of their time with you, the overall space needed for a litter is not small. With our most recent litter, the puppies took up the entirety of our office, which is easily a 12'x14' room. You must provide a large enough potty area that the entire litter is able to use it without it becoming "full" instantly. For us this means using 2-3 grass trays at a time, lined up along the far side of the pen.
Ideally the potty area is against a back wall, away from where you would approach their area. Even the cleanest of pups will gleefully trample a well-used potty tray. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination of the mess this would create…

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Just some feral Spinone pups for you to enjoy

Final thoughts:
Yes, this is labor intensive, and your laundry will be busy. However your puppies will be clean, and they will want to be clean. Your whelping box will also be clean, and not smell bad (except for certain special times)

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