Ah, house training. A sometimes fraught area and probably one of the first things that needs to be trained.

Puppies have an approximately 45-minute bladder capacity at 3 weeks old , 75-minute capacity at 8 weeks old, 90-minute capacity at 12 weeks old and a 2 hour capacity at 18 weeks old.

Normal urine production is 2mL/kilogram/hour. A 1.5kg puppy should produce about 3mL of urine per hour – about 72mL per day.

 

My puppy weighed 5kg at 8 weeks and so had a bladder capacity of approximately 10mL or 2  teaspoons.

They just seem like tablespoons when you have to clear it up!

Dog ownership is a scatological business – even more so since we started picking up faeces in poo bags. Get two dog owners together in a park and it isn’t long before the discussion turns to poo, but never more so than when one has a puppy.

In all honesty, I never imagined that my puppy pooing on the pavement would mark a major triumph, never mind be the best thing that happened to me all day. (To be fair, it was an unusually quiet day). It just seemed so grown up. Maybe it was the disturbed nights.

That’s another issue with housetraining. I’m fine with being woken up in the night to take my puppy out – he is very good about letting me know. Where I have a problem is that he then doesn’t want to settle down. We are working on that with a wind-down routine, not helped by the fact that it’s fox-breeding season and the yapping outside is very arousing. If the puppy doesn’t wake me up, they certainly will.

Next week: There’s a first time for everything – and everything is for the first time

Meanwhile, why not check out R+Dog Training Puppy Start Right Courses and register for the new Puppy Social Walk in Chiswick House grounds starting in a few days.