# Exercise pen or crate at night?



## azawatsky (Jun 11, 2015)

Can I put my puppy in an exercise pen at night with a pee pad rather than crating him and waking up every few hours to take him out? If I do this, will he get confused about when he needs to go on the pee pad and when he should go outside? Thank you for your help!


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## elrohwen (Nov 10, 2011)

It can be very difficult to fully house train a dog who has been started on pee pads. They may pee on other things that look like pee pads (like newspaper or rugs). And they have not been rewarded for going outside as much because they've learned to go in the house.

I would just suffer through a couple weeks of waking up in the middle of the night.


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## Amaryllis (Dec 28, 2011)

elrohwen said:


> It can be very difficult to fully house train a dog who has been started on pee pads. They may pee on other things that look like pee pads (like newspaper or rugs). And they have not been rewarded for going outside as much because they've learned to go in the house.
> 
> I would just suffer through a couple weeks of waking up in the middle of the night.


Agreed. Puppies are cute, but you pay for that with potty training and other such inconveniences.


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## Elanor Ripley (Jun 18, 2015)

I basically kept a blog of all her habits, so I can track her stuff. Timing her poops is easy, fill her food bowl after her first nap of day, and she will poop if I take her out. 

Going pee, is another story, harder but manageable. I got my 10 week old puppy on Monday, and today, she only had 2 accidents, which is really good, just not perfect yet. I basically just take her out enough so that she doesn't stay in long enough to need to pee inside. 

Best thing I did was give her treats after potty outside, but not give her those treats for anything else. I only give her treats in her crate and outside mostly when pottying.


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## lil_fuzzy (Aug 16, 2010)

I prefer crating at night. I find that most puppies can hold it through the night from a very early age, just take them out last thing before bed and first thing in the morning. If they do whine in the night, just take them out to pee, then straight back in the crate with minimal fuss.

As above, I don't like training a puppy to go on pee pads because it basically teaches the puppy that it's ok to pee in the house, and on any square on the floor that feels/looks remotely like a pee pad. And there's no good reason to use pee pads, unless you're on the 10th floor with no access to grass.


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## hookilau (Jun 10, 2015)

Our pup is 8 weeks old now, but due to ahem, 'miscommunication' from her originating family about her age, she was actually closer to 5-6 wks when we brought her home.

We have never crated her, rather, we used a puppy pen with one puppy pad. She always alerted us and has only used the pad to pee once while I was gone from the house for longer than I intended to be. 

Right from the time I took her home, we have been taking her outside to pee & poop as well as waiting for a polite 'sit' before doing anything including petting. I tell you, that asking politely by offering a sit is freeekin *bomb-proof*.

I don't want to say it's like this for all pups, but even in the ex-pen I'm up at 1-2am and again at 4am. 

I want her to alert me, so I respond with a trip outside every time she carries on & she hasn't let me down yet :clap2:

I feel like if she was in a crate, it would be the same unless I slept through her alerting us, or for some reason she didn't alert us.

I chose to go with the ex-pen and puppy pad because in raising other pups, we've had puppy accidents before & not realized it. That is until we got into the habit of sniffing the crate bedding =P We didn't use puppy pads, just a bed because the popular notion at the time was that puppies won't void where they sleep, so the crate was only big enough for the pup & his bed.

I should say that the pups I'm talking about all came from a caged background, either from an Animal Hospital or Pet Store of some kind where they are not given a choice to go outside. They must void in the cage & stay there until someone gets around to cleaning it or notices. 

The pups ended up not having an aversion to the mess & made house training more difficult. I've also met in my professional life, grown-ish pups who actually poop in their crates and just stomp allllll in it as if it's nothing. 

Their people failed crate training 101 & never realized they must switch tactics if the pup continually voids in the crate. The people firmly believed the pup should not void in the crate, even though she was 8 months old. They hired me (I'm a pet sitter) to walk her during the day, keeping silent about her confusion. They were figuring I could potty train her in 2 weeks (as that's how long they hired me for). Needless to say after about 3 days I told them they needed to make other arrangements, since all of my attempts at discussing the real problem we met with dumbfounded wonder.:doh:

But I digress. I'm not saying this will happen to your pup if you use a crate. Just conveying why I chose an x pen vs. crate. Having seen the flip side of what can go wrong, I prefer to give the pup room to make a mistake & move away from it when I can't be there to supervise all that's going on.

I figure if I reinforce like mad when she goes outside and ignore any accidents inside, we will eventually succeed. 

One out weighing the other in occurrences and all :rockon:


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