house training

[raidersrule]

HI, I have a 12 week puppy and was wondering at what age should it be reasonable to expect my puppy to not have accidents on a consistent basis? We are crate training her now, and every other day or every third day it seems like she has an accident in her crate. Luckily she hasn't had one in the house just in her crate. We take her out every 2-3 hours, and she can hold it 4-6 hours during the night. I am just getting worried that she will continue to pee in her crate. I have never owned a puppy before so any advice would be appreciated.

[groupieindenial]

When she has the accidents in her crate, is she in ther longer than 3 hours? Is it that you place her in the crate after she's eaten, and before she's had a chance to relieve herself?

How often is she peeing? I think female pups can easily pick up an infection (crystals?), and a sign is excessive peeing. Also, when she's outside, is she eating snow? I dind't realize it at first, but my pup was peeing every 1/2 hour, it was driving me nuts. Till I realized every time I took her out, waiting 20 minutes for her to go pee, she'd be munchin on snow just about the entire time.

[raidersrule]

We take her out during the day quite regularly and usually take her out around 2 hours and occasionaly 3 at the most. I also take her outside after she eats and after she has been out of her crate playing. This means I am usually taking her out about 10 times during the day and 2-3 times at night. I didn't even think about the snow. That might actually be what is causing the accidents. She loves to play in the snow, and the last 3 weeks we have had plenty of it in the backyard.

[CJsMommy]

Is it possible her crate is too big? She should only be able to stand up, turn a circle, and lay back down. After we got the right size crate we still had a couple of accidents and it was suggested we put his food bowl in with him (only fill it during eating times). Dogs don't usually relieve themselves where they eat and sleep.