House breaking signal?

I have my pup confined to the kitchen (with a tile floor) as he is too unpredictable in the bathroom department. The back door is 1 (carpeted) room away from the kitchen. I have been taking him out often and he is good about going outside and I think he understands the command "make" however he will still go at will when in the house without really any warning and once he is set on it nothing can distract him so that I can take him out. Some people use a bell and ring it when they take him out however I can't do this as he would just think it was a toy and play with it defeating the purpose.

How do you suggest I teach him to communicate to me that he needs to go out?

How old is your pup? It could be that he is still too young to even know himself, in advance, if he has to pee.

The bell thing - some people hang bells on their back door for the dog to ring when he has to go out. I personally watch my dogs' behavior and figure out what each dogs' signal is. I have one that will come lay his head on my chest and wag the tip of his tail when he needs to go, one that will go and stand by the backdoor, one that will pace between me and the door, another that just looks at me and whine, another that paces and whines.

Each dog is going to be different about "how" they tell you, unless you teach them a specific way to tell you, like ringing a bell on the back door.

Yeah he is only 8 weeks old right now and while he might not know when he has to go, when I take him out and tell him to "make" he seems to understand and does it and then looks for a treat.

As far as I can tell so far he has no type of signal, he just stops and squats and at that point there is nothing I can do about it. As for a bell, he doesn't have access to the back door and even if he did, he would play with that bell and rip it down from wherever he is. How do I go about teachin ghim to let me know when he needs to go or is it too soon?

signal to go out

I have the same problem with my 12-wk-old GSD male. He's great about peeing right away when I get him outside, but sometimes he will pee (only once with me right there) again inside about 15-20 minutes later. The one time I caught him at it and yelled, he ran for the door, which was a good sign. But all the other times are "secret pees" with no traditional warning. So I hung a cowbell (all I have) next to the door and have been clanging it every time we go out and saying "Out!" If he clangs it in play, I'm prepared to take him out, even if it was only 10 minutes later. But if your dog can't get to the door, can you hang the bell in the closest place to the door (i.e., open doorway)? I have to admit that we've only been doing the ringing for 3 days with no results so far. But I want to give it a couple of weeks. BTW, I know Otto doesn't have a urinary tract infection because he can hold it for 7 hours every night.

Puppies have to pee when they wake up, after they eat, after they drink (and sometimes WHILE they drink), after they play, and sometimes during play. At 8 weeks, chances are if he's just stopping what he's doing and squatting, he doesn't even know he has to pee until he's peeing. Chances are you won't see a definate signal for a couple of months - he's just too young. Sometimes he doesn't know he has to pee until he's in the middle of it, other times he knows he has to pee, and just does, because he doesn't have the control to take the time to let you know that he has to then wait to get out the door.

The first few weeks of house training an 8 week old puppy is generally you training yourself how often to take him out....

Yeah I seemed to notice that. He is regular for the most part, but sometimes out of nowhere he just goes off schedule and squats without warning.

As for the cow bell, as I said I COULD hang one up but I think he would just rip it down and try to chew it. I could try but I really doubt he would leave it be. Today he found out that he could get the crap off the top of his crate so I had to move all that stuff and he also figured out that there were pictures hanging on the fridge at his stand up level so I had to remove those.

We put up a bell at first because when Peyton was smaller we couldn't detect a "i have to potty" signal. And yes, he did abuse it a little and wanted to go out all the time! But we never allowed him to play outside when he rang the bell. we had different play times and potty times. After a couple weeks (and a lot of trips down 3 flights of stairs in our apt. building) we removed the bell. Now Peyton is old enough (four and a half months) to know to lightly scratch at the door and whine when he has to go. So I guess that i think that there's no harm in trying a bell. it doesn't mean that it has to be there forever.

Just an update on the cowbell we put up for Otto: It's been almost a week now and for about 3 days he has been ringing it when he wants to go out (not every time, though). He sits looking at the door or turns around and looks intently at us. The downside is that sometimes he just wants to go out and fool around, so last night my husband removed the bell after 2 false trips. Then about 30 min later the pup peed on the floor! Talk about inconsistency... But on the whole, I'm encouraged.

Yeah I am going to try to put one up but I can tell already it is going to end badly lololol.

I have this same problem with Louie, who is about 6 months old now, and still not quite housebroken. He has three houses to learn in though. At my house, he very rarely gets to roam around freely, so he will never learn to ring a bell or stand by the door or anything like that. I keep him confined in a playpen in my room when I'm not directly interacting with him.

He never has accidents in his playpen or when we're hanging out together in my room. He has had a couple accidents lately though when I've let him play with my roommates' dogs in the family room... he'll be playing along and as soon as I turn my head for an instant all of a sudden he has stopped playing and is peeing or pooing on the carpet

On the weekends we go to my boyfriend's house. I recently found out that my boyfriend doesn't watch him as closely as I do -- I sleep in and leave Louie under his care, and apparently Louie has found a corner of the condo to use as his personal bathroom spot. We didn't know for a while, it's a corner nobody uses, it just has some boxes piled up, etc. I've explained the rules to my boyfriend, but he never took them seriously until now. :/

Louie also comes to work with me, and he is very good about waiting until I take him outside. I keep him confined to my cubicle, of course, but I have found a couple accidents the last couple weeks, usually right before I was about to take him out, so pretty much on schedule, I guess he just got tired of waiting for me and just went.

It would be nice if he'd give me some sort of signal!

At work I was thinking about putting a little bell up in the cubicle somewhere where he wouldn't run into it normally, but could go over and hit it when he wanted to let me know he needed to go potty.

At the boyfriend's house, he will no longer have any freedom to roam, so I don't know how he would learn any sort of signal. He will always be leashed to one of us or in his crate if we're not actively interacting with him.

How do puppies who aren't allowed to roam around the house learn to go to the back door when they need to go potty? Or is this just something that you can't do until they're older and more reliable and have earned their freedom? I wonder what that will be like...

Thats my problem exactly.