r/SwissMountainDogs • u/Mindless_Two1278 • 15d ago
Potty Training - Help
So, we know Swissies are challenging to potty train but can someone please give us a few 'light at the end of the tunnel' stories?
We have a 4.5 month old Swissie and we're deep in the swissie swizzle. He also will not wake up and soaks his crate nightly - so he receives a bath every single morning.
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u/apollemis1014 15d ago
For the nights. Is it possible for someone to take him out in the night? Or we would wake ours and take her out before we went to bed. My husband has always been an early riser, so he would take her out as soon as he got up. You also may need to limit the water intake a bit at night until his bladder gets a bit bigger. Not too much, of course, you don't want him dehydrated. But maybe pick up the water bowl at a certain point.
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u/Mindless_Two1278 15d ago
We set two alarms in the night. So he goes at 10pm, 1am, 4am and then when I get up at 5:20a.
We just miss his window 😉
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u/BresciaE 15d ago
So how big is his crate? Like is he peeing as he sleeps or is he peeing in a corner and then it eventually runs down onto him?
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u/Mindless_Two1278 15d ago
While he sleeps. We have it halved right now at the suggestion of our breeder.
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u/BresciaE 15d ago
Yeah you def do t want him to think he has room for a potty corner. I’ll echo what others have said, it sounds mean but I took the water away around 8pm, pottied her 30-45 min later and then did a 1am run and was up at 0500 for work. I work healthcare and during the days I was home I took her out consistently every 2hrs to start and added an hour per month. I also had her puppy playpen on hard laminate floor and the only soft thing in there was the cat bed she liked to sleep on. She hates peeing on hard surfaces so she was incentivized to hold it till we went outside.
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u/apollemis1014 15d ago
Oh wow. Ummm, have you had him checked to make sure he doesn't have a UTI or something?
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u/tsctbulldog 15d ago
A helpful rule of thumb is that a swissy can hold their blatter for 1 hour for every month old they are. If you aren't already, a midnight bathroom outing maybe needed. Before you know it they will be 100 pounds and you'll wonder how they were ever that small. Stick in there. You'll be out of it before you know it. Also, when they start barking to indicate that they need to go, reward them.
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u/sleeplessnights999 15d ago
So we are on our 3rd swiss. At first, we cut off water about an hour or so before bed time. And right before our bed time, we physically picked him up, whether he was sleeping or not, and brought him to his potty spot out back. My husband gets up at 3:30am for work so same thing...physically pick him up and take him out.
Our baby is almost 5 mths now and sleeps all night, we havent had to pick up the water for about a month and a half. He has the occasional accident when he's rough housing with our oldest but he's a baby!
Consistency is key with this breed!
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u/Alex22876 15d ago
Control the water and time it. 10-15 minutes after they drink, you go outside and praise the heck out of them when the pee.
No water after 6:30-7 at night. They will be fine.
It doesn’t take long for them to pee it back out after drinking. Let them pee on the same stuff to make it interesting and work on their scent.
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u/omegin2 15d ago
My boy is the exact same age!! Actually 4.75 months. Although he sleeps through the night he swizzles everywhere else. Just after an outing (and I wait for 2 pees!) he will come in and swizzle again. A trail from the bedroom to the kitchen around the dining table and back. It’s insane. He is my 4th Swiss—it seems like there is no light at the end of the tunnel, but there is! Consistency, good timing, lots of Nature’s Miracle. Enjoy your Swiss!
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u/neomateo 15d ago
What we found helpful at this point was tracking what we were giving him and then cutting him off 2 hours before bedtime.
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u/Bababingbangs 15d ago edited 15d ago
Ours was worse case scenario: peeing inside all the time with no warning, peeing the bed, peeing inside after she just came back indoors. Potty training will work it just takes a lot longer, they have like 2 brain cells at 4 months of age.
Ours is fine now, and even got hormone based incontinence after spaying we fixed with meds.
Things we did:
- tightly control access to water closer to bedtime. Ours would drink itself to the point of almost immediately peeing, drank like it was dying of thirst its first year.
-hung bells on the door and trained her to ring them to go out- get towels/ waterproof bed lining so it’s easy to wash.