We have had a little Staffy bitch, Lily, from 6 weeks of age, she has now just turned 8 weeks. We are only having very limited success with house training her despite following advice from the breeder.

She seems to pee at will in random places around our house very frequently in apparent preference to going outside despite myself my wife and the children spending quite long periods of time with her. When she does pee outside it is often only a small amount with her seeming to save the big gushers for inside (luckily we have stone floors downstairs !). We don't tell her off for peeing and just clean it up.

Poo wise things are a bit better, thankfully, with her seeming to prefer to hang on until she is taken outside.

Lily sleeps in our utility room at night with puppy pads near the backdoor
which are used occasionally. My 2 questions are:
1. Are we giving her too big an area to roam in, should she be confined to the utility room until house trained?
2. If not how can we stop these apparently random floods of pee in the house?
Sorry about the rambling nature of my question but we are beginning to feel a bit peed off if you can pardon the pun!

1) probably, yes at 8 weeks she will probably still need to 'go' every hour or so, and you basically need to keep an eye on her wherever she is at all times so if you limit her area it makes that easier.
You said you have stone floors? I'm presuming they are porous? If thats the case then every time she wees on them it socks in and starts to smell like her toilet to her as Tups tend to usr areas they have see before, so I would firstly concentrate on trying to de-toilet your floors, then maybe limit her to day the kitchen? By a baby gate so she can still see people and isnt isolated and you can keep an Ey on her. And then start taking her out regularly, after naps, playing, eating and anytime she starts sniffing or circling. Everytime she 'goes' outside you should give her a treat, fuss etc and let we know that she did good. It's also a good idea to have a short play session with her after she goes so she doesn't click on thwt every time she goes you bring her straight in, otherwise she may start holding it to prolong her outside time. As for night time, is she crate trained? If not I would consider it, I personally didn't use pads as they encourage them that going inside use acceptable and it just confuses them a bit sorry for rambling, hope some of it maybe helpful.

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Thank you very much for your reply and sorry for taking so long to get back to you. Your answer was very helpful and although it is a little like trying to get a genie back into a bottle due to the regime which we had adopted with her we are seeing a general improvement in Lily's behavior. We will be getting a crate for her as well and look forward to seeing how this will help matters.

Thanks again.

you are very welcome
there is some great advice on here about crate training, i believe there is a sticky i was unsure about a crate before we got kiva, but it has been a godsend, and she loves it!! she knows if she is in there, even when she's gone in of her own accord and the door is open, she can just relax and she wont be bothered. Im glad you are seeing some improvements, i think the main things to focus on are routine, patience and consistency

oh and ps....sorry about all the random words and mispellings in my first post! i replied on my phone and clearly didnt check it before replying

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