crate training from newspaper to kitty litter

[nana]

hello everybody. we have been crate training Huda, our 4 month old frenchie, with great success. she pees and poops 95% of the time with the occasional accident especially with the pee, sometimes she just doenst get there in time but at least she tries :D but now we are trying to change the newspaper in the litter box to kitty litter but when we put a little bit of kitty litter she starts to play with it and next thing u know we have kitty litter everywhere :eek: i was wondering if anyone has encountered this problem and if they have overcome it? maybe shes just to young any suggestions would help. thx

[nana]

anybody???

[sakirby]

yeah, sorry for the lack of help. i don't know anything about this either. we had oscar paper trained inside for a couple of weeks, and then it was always outside. sorry.

[gmacleod]

Not something I've ever done myself, but it is something I've heard of a few people doing. It's actually quite a good idea if you have to work long hours and don't want your dog crated or otherwise left unable to relieve itself for many hours every single day. That sort of thing can't be all that great for the kidneys and other organs. If you don't have those sorts of issues though, then I'd just go with training her straight to outside. It's usually the faster and more effective way of housetraining.

But if you do want to litter train her, I'd suggest a gradual transition from newspaper to litter. And perhaps try a clay-type litter rather than granules, since it should be less fun to play with. I'd try filling the litter tray with a layer of litter, and then laying the newspaper on top. You can then gradually use less and less paper until there's finally none. Hopefully by that stage the novelty will have worn off and she'll be less inclined to play with it. LOL - good luck!

[UFshutterbabe]

Hey, I think this is my first post here - yay!
You might want to try the Purina dog litter. Our 15 week old puppy, Maxwell, seems to be doing better on that than on any kind of kitty litter that we've tried. Our only problem with the Purina litter is that he likes to chew individual peices of it occasionaly. Trying not to be TMI- but even when they eat an entire peice of litter, it still comes out ok. The other thing that helped us in the transition from newspaper to litter was to put a layer of litter underneath the newspaper at first, so he could get used to the smell and texture, then slowly make the area covered by the paper smaller and smaller until it disappeared. And of course, it doesn't hurt to leave a little pee or poop in the litter (initially) so they can get the idea that the litter box is the cool place to do all that potty stuff. You've probably already seen this page, but here is where we got our starting info on litter box training the pup - http://www.kturby.com/litter/litter.htm
Hope this works - Lauren

[nana]

well we live in a rented apartment that doesnt allow dogs so we have to keep the damage down evilicon :D but we also thought since shes small and we both work, so kitty box training would be a good idea and its working great. she now has it down perfectly. she always pees in the box and waits until we take her out to drop a stool appicon

it also makes our hectic lives alittle more easy :)