#2

First off, thanks for all the great advice so far. Our question has to do with getting our 18 week old puppy to go #2 in the morning. Our routine each day is to take her out first thing for a quick pee, then she is fed. Roughly 20 minutes later I take her for a 15 to 20 minute walk. She seems to pee just fine, but when it comes to doing #2, more often than not she doesn't go. This is normally not a problem, but in our case we are gone all day and she will invariably have gone in her crate by the time we get back. This is understandable with the amount of time we are gone from the house. However, if we could get her to go before we left, there would be less of a mess to deal with when we get home.

My other concern was that she might associate the crate as a place to go even as she matures. We'd like to think that the number of accidents would decrease (as she gets older) by the time we get home.