I am having a difficult time with Lola's potty training. She is three months old and we have had her since she was around eight weeks old. We started potty training right away. She still isn't even close to being potty trained. I have had dogs all while I was growing up and am aware of the different ways of training and have tried several. Not only is she unable to hold it for three hours, she either cannot hold it or chooses not to hold it, for even one hour. I will bring her out, she will go and come inside. Sometimes within only about 20 minutes she goes in the house (with no warning). We constantly bring her out and it amazes me that she should be able to hold it for around 3 hours. It does seem as though she knows where she should go to the bathroom; when I yell "no" when she begins to go in the house, she then runs to the door. She does not always have access to water because she does tend to drink a lot. I am wondering if maybe there might be something going on or if she is just a difficult puppy to train. I would gladly have already brought her to the vet but do not have tons of money to spend just for them to tell me she is fine. Wanted to see what you guys thought before I went ahead and brought her.

Thank you for any thoughts and suggestions.

embry was like this until 8 months, but we had a bigger problem, he was afraid to go potty outside. we'd sit out there with him for hours and hours and as soon as we went back inside after nothing he'd run upstairs and pee on his potty pads. drove us insane, and it was so bad that we had to spend $3000 replacing the carpet into our rental.

finally when he got neutered and started going to the dog park he was fine going potty outside. Around 8 months he finally got that going potty inside was a no no, and it helped a lot that when we moved his scent wasn't in the house so now at a year old he's accident free.

i hope you guys can figure something out.
it helps setting an alarm to go off every 2 hours and let her out.
make sure you NEVER let her see you cleaning it up

Do you have a crate? This is when I would just start limiting her to the crate more often and really use it as a potty training aid.

My suggestion would be to keep her in there at all times unless she is tethered to your side. Bring her outside as often as possible (when you are home with her, every 20-30 mins). DO NOT give her an opportunity to fail. Bring her outside and throw a party when she goes. Then give her more playtime and exercise. No matter what, she should be able to hold it for 20 mins. She shouldn't go in the crate because she won't want to go where she sleeps. If she does, then you know you have a problem.

If she's not showing signs, you may want to try putting a bell on the door. Everytime you take her out to pee, make her hit the bell with her paw. Eventually, she should start to hit the bell when she needs to go (seen it work numerous times!).

Make sure you're using an enzyme cleaner like Nature's Miracle to clean the stains/spots on the carpet or the floor. You need to erase all signs of excrement.

If you don't start to see some improvement in the next couple of weeks, yeah I would take her to the vet.

Thank you so much for your suggestions. We have been working hard on it, and she's finally got it! Last week we were actually able to start letting her sleep with us rather than putting her in her crate. She wakes me up at night when she has to go out. How nice it is having a clean house again!
Thanks again!