10 week old frenchie puppy pooping and peeing in crate

Question

We just got a 10 week old french bulldog puppy. At night when we go to bed we crate her so she can't get into any trouble while we're sleeping.

Now I know puppies don't have fully developed bladders and bowels and may need to get up at least once in the night to go to the bathroom however our girl is going about every 2 hours all night long.

She will whine once she's gone poop or pee to let us know that her crate is dirty, we have to get up, pick her up and take her to her puppy pad, usually clean feces off her, then go back and remove her bedding from the crate, wash it with soap and water, put new bedding back in it, then go get her and put her back. Of course she never goes on her pad because at that point she's already emptied herself.

Some nights she only pees in her crate, some nights she only poops in her crate and some nights she poops and pee's in her crate.

We are feeding her 3x per day - 1/2 cup of food. Typically we feed her around 7:30 am, Noon, and we were feeding her at 7 pm but we moved her last feeding till earlier (5 pm) in hopes it would give her more time to evacuate before going to bed.

At this point we're going on day 7 with barely any sleep and a bit frazzled. I know some of this is to be expected but this seems a bit extreme. The other thing is that she's not going to the bathroom much in the day. We try to encourage her to go but she typically won't go more than a couple times during the day. I'd say she's peeing and pooping more and night than during the day.

Her stool is a little loose - its not diarrhea but its not firm. We're feeding her the same food the breeder we bought her from was feeding her - which is Authority Puppy - Chicken and Rice Kibble.

The other thing is that we suspect she may be eating her feces which we're trying to discourage.

I don't know if we need to give her more time to get settled in and get used to her routine, if maybe we should remove her bedding from the crate, maybe we should switch her food to something else, try and exercise her more? Or maybe there's something medically wrong and we need to see the vet.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

There's a reason for everything.

You see, a pup that young can't possibly be trained because most training courses I've seen are ten weeks long or more (So on the day this dog was born, several other dogs were going into training, and now they are graduating as we speak!) but it's never too early to try to potty train your puppy. Try some pup poo pads, they are little pads that go on the floor of your house (the corner is a good place to put them, but inside the forementioned crate would also be good, as the pup already has learned to associate it with doing her "business".) The pads work by the pup coming to the pad, giving it a good sniff and hopefully think "ah, what a great place to drop a load!" Eventually, the pup will learn poo pad=good to poo on. When your pup gets big enough, you can train the pup to start going outside if you have a yard (I myself have a HUGE yard so it was no problem for my pup) one way to train the pup would be to place the pad outside so the pup would have to go out there to use the little doggie's room. To address the loose stool problem, this is normal for puppies, but only for a couple of days after birth. Your pup's poop is probably soft right now not because she's sick, but because as you mentioned, she eats her own poop, so the same thing goes through her day after day. here is some information.

hopefully, your pup is not sick. Just take my advice and you should be fine.