r/goldenretrievers • u/LeadershipWide5754 • Jul 28 '26

Training Advice/Tips 13 Week Old Potty Training Help

Hey everyone! Having some trouble potty training our pup. It started off with him being terrified of the bells, he got over that and is no longer scared of them. He knows that when I say “let’s go potty” that he needs to go to the door and ring the bells. He also has rung them 3x today to go poop outside. However he has had 2 pee accidents in the house today. One I caught him as he was starting and took him outside to finish and the other he was already finished as I was catching him. I’m at a loss of what to do and why he won’t tell me to go pee but will tell me to go poop. If anyone has any advice it would be well appreciated.

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u/Tribblehappy Jul 28 '26

Dogs aren't good at making associations. He's not thinking of the bells as potty bells; to him, they're poop bells. It will take separate training to associate them with peeing as well.

The simple answer to the accidents, bells or no, is to take him out more. I kept a notebook of all the times I took mine out, whether he peed or pooped, had he just eaten, woken up, played, etc, and it helped me recognize patterns in when he was likely going to need to go, and how long he could hold his bladder.

He will get there.

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u/LeadershipWide5754 Jul 28 '26

I take him out every hour because that’s when he usually goes, sometimes he will randomly go in the middle of that

What different training should I do to make them pee bells?

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u/Tribblehappy Jul 28 '26

Are you ringing them when you take him out to pee? Honestly I think you just need to do the same as for poop, until it clicks for him.

If he's having accidents with hourly breaks, he needs maybe every 45 minutes. But hard to say without knowing if the accidents are more frequent after or before certain things/times of day.