Hello all, my boyfriend & I have recently gotten a 6mo. pomeranian puppy. We're having trouble potty training him and quite honestly at a loss at what to do.
Some context for our situation: We live in a fourth floor apartment with no balcony. We know pee pads are not the ideal for training, but it has been below 5degrees farenheit all week, and will continue to be between -8 and 10 degrees for the next 2-3 weeks so we cannot take him outside. He's only five pounds, the wind pushes him around and he begins shivering and lifting his paws up within minutes of being outside. Yes he has a coat and boots, it's simply just too cold.
Day 1: We only had him for the night, but initially he peed on the pee pad, but had later accidents on the floor.
Day 2: Did not use the pee pad at all, only used the bathroom on the floor.
Day 3: Switched to 2 hours in the crate, 1 hour out. Used the pee pad once, but otherwise just peed on the floor.
Day 4: Tried the potty training schedule of taking him out every 30-40 minutes to our apartments pet relief area. Successfully was able to potty outside 2/3 times but otherwise would hold it until playtime so he could go on the floor. Each time we would be outside between 10-20 minutes. He also was not able to have lots of out of crate time because everytime we would take him out to play/train he would have an accident within 5 mins and we would have to crate him until our next attempt.
Day 5: Was continuing to take him to the apartment pet relief area, but in the morning 1 owner allowed their dog to bark incessantly at him, and another trip another owner allowed their dog to charge at him. We had to pick him up to prevent him from getting hurt since this dog was much larger. Since this incident, approaching the pet relief area has been making him panic. We tried to take him to the pet relief area the rest of the day but he would refuse to go, and would desperately try and go back in the direction of out apartment (presumably so he could pee/poop indoors). Chatgpt suggested switching back to pee pads, so we are.
Day 6 (today): We're doing a cycle of every 45 mins we take him out for playtime/training for about 20 minutes, crating him for about 10-15 minutes, and taking him out again to attempt to potty on the pee pad. These potty sessions have him out for about 5-10 minutes, and we don't play with him at all during these sessions. We try to redirect him to the pad when we see him sniffing around, but he keeps managing to pee/poop on the floor. He will literally sniff for less than a second and begin to potty without giving us a chance to relocate him to the pad. Also, he's began trying to play with the pad (biting it, trying to drag it around, and attempting to play tug-o-war when we take it away.)
Sorry for the long post, but I'm getting desperate. He is crate trained pretty well, so we have been using that as a tool. Does anyone have advice on what to do? In the meantime I'm just cleaning up his messes and counting down the seconds till spring. Thanks in advance.
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