BjStegehuis

Wow, your tips have all been spot on so far! Over the last few days we have bought Diego a snuffle mat and a donut bed (he needed a bit of time to get used to it), and we regularly put some blankets on the ground for him to play with. They have all been a great succes, I'll definitely look into these Kong suggestions next!

Yes, when we walk into the room with his meals, he immediately jumps into his crate. We hand feed part of the meal (in the back of his crate) to teach some impuls control, for the rest of the meal we just put the bowl in his crate.

Thanks for replying. We will definitely look into getting a snuffle mat. So far, Diego has only been interested in biting blankets, not in digging in them. I also love the donut bed but as long as he's not been completely potty trained we'd like him to only sleep in the crate, we'll get one of those later. Somehow, todat Diego has been a perfect dog all day, getting into the crate without complaining, playing with the Kong toy for a few minutes (which is a new record:) ). To answer your questions; we've tried completely ignoring him and also talking a bit to him in the crate, but so far ignoring him works a lot better. We don't put him in straight after playing, a typical schedule would go more or less like this; 7.00 waking up, going potty 7.15 play time 7.30 breakfast (maybe a little bit of training/impulse control) 7.45 potty again 7.50 playing a bit more 8.00 calm down with us on the sofa, usually on our lap with a chew toy 8.15 When he starts to fall asleep, we put him in the crate and he sleeps for an hour or two. etc Not sure if today was an exception, or maybe he just feels a bit more confident and relaxed now that he's getting used to us and our routines...

Update after the first 6 nights; First of all, little Diego has been amazing, potty training is going very well! We have run into another problem though; We're trying to get Diego into a routine of eating, going potty, playing/training/socializing etc, sleeping. We're using a crate, which Diego likes, but he really hates being locked up in it (same in a pen). He will whine, scream and bite at the crate when locked up during the day. At night, he doesn't have a problem sleeping in the crate next to our bed. We are feeding him in the crate, playing crate games, using a Kong (which he loves for 10 seconds but loses interest after that), he's got an old T-shirt in it. The problem we're having because of this, is that the only way we can get him to sleep or at least settle down during the day, is to have him in our lap on the sofa. We've started doing this just to help him settle down a bit after playing, so we could put him in the crate once he was asleep. This worked at first, but now he wakes up and only wants to get back to the sofa. He will just run around, jump up to the couch and bite everything. When he's in the crate, he get's really stressed so that's not helping. When he starts biting, we re-direct to chew toys, but that only works for a short time. So for us, it's really hard to tell if this behaviour is because he's not getting enough mental/physical stimulation, or maybe he's getting too much of it. Would love to get your advice on this, and also on other ways to help him settle down a bit when he gets worked up.

Thanks for all the replies, it's super helpful! I will definitely try to teach him to go on command. We'll also ask the breeder for advice, I think she's already started potty training on some old newspapers. We're looking into the real grass option and will ley you know how it's working!

Hi Adrienne, My girlfriend and I are getting an 8 week old dachshund pup soon (we're very excited 🙂 ), but we are a bit worried about potty training because we live in an appartment and don't have acces to a private/quiet yard. We've got two options; Directly across the road from our place, there's a large grass area that's great for taking dogs to go potty, but I'm not sure if it's a good idea to use it at first because there are other dogs around frequently and our pup will not be fully vaccinated when we get it. It's also next to a busy road, so it might be overwhelming for a young pup. Our alternative would be to potty traing our pup on the balcony, using a patch of artificial grass for it. This would also make it a lot easier to quickly go outside when needed, but it could be confusing when he get's a bit older and we don't want him to use the balcony anymore. Do you have any advice for us? Thanks!