I just adopted an 11 week old puppy.  The foster home said she was mostly housetrained, but she doesn't appear to be at all.  We keep her in a crate at night and now I am keeping her outside or in the crate by day.  When she wakes from a nap or eats we take her out right away.  But I keep finding puddles on the floor - she seems to deliberately go in the house.  She snuk up to our bedroom the other day and pooped twice and peed.  What would help?  We have raised a pup before but got her at 8 weeks.  She was so easy to train and never had accidents.  What do  you do when they want to go in the house?  Help!!! 

The trick is to catch them in the act. If you see the pup going in the house startle it (yell hey or no!) and pick it up immediately and bring it outside. When it does its duty outside always praise the pup.

In the meantime, if you are going to leave it out of a crate, I would confine the pup to one room only...get child/dog gates so it cant get out. I would only keep the pup out of a crate while I am around until it gets older and you can trust it.

Pups can't hold it in like an adult dog and have to go to the bathroom frequently...every 1/2 hour or so...sometimes less depending on the age of the pup.

I guess I am on the right track.  I can't always be on top of her so when the weather is nice I've been letting her stay on the deck.  Do you think that is keeping her from learning?  I do have my living room/kitchen blocked in with gates and luckily my floor is tile.  We have only had her less than a week so maybe the move has confused her.  In the mean time I'm also taking her out for lots of walks to keep her out of trouble.  I forgot how much work puppies are.  She doesnt' like the morning dew on her feet so this am she went out and pooped and then ran back in to pee...  I think tomorrow I will take her out to the front where there is just gravel - maybe she'll like that better.

thanks...

Puppies often intentionally go in a room different from the one they generally live in.  It's not to intentionally potty in the house though.  For them the bedroom they never go into is no different than the yard.  It isn't part of their den and it is ok to potty in since they don't live there.  That's why you confine a pup to its crate then slowly start building up room by room.  First they get the kitchen, then the kitchen and living room then kitchen, living room and bedroom etc  and at first each time y ou add a room you can expect a little back sliding.  Sometimes it just clicks though and they realize outside = potty ANYWHERE inside = hold it.

You can try some bells on the door to see if you can encourage her to ask to go out.  Also remember at 11 weeks every commercial break is a good opportunity to practice outside to potty.  Once they start to get it you can lengthen the times between breaks but until they start to understand praise for outside (I make a rediculiously big deal of it, treats clapping, just stupid) and inside = bad (if you catch them in the act a gruff NO! and a whisk outside with LOTS of stupid excited praise if they finish out there) they need LOTS of accidents.

I try to remember any accident the puppy has inside is my fault since I'm the one in charge of preventing accidents and for a while it's all prevention....

I' m always surprised when people think shorthairs are hard to housebreak.  It seemed like all three of ours picked it up quickly.  Molly is the first one we ever crated and when she was little the back of the crate was removed and the crate shoved up against the dog door so if she did not want to mess in the crate the obvioux answer was to go outside.  She more or less trained herself.  Our second GSP (a rescue) had distemper and immune problems.  Even though at the worst of it her back legs would not supprot her she would insist on dragging herself to the far end of the yard to do her business and then someone would have to go out and carry her back.  She still insisted on going outside.  Note:  the puppy did pull through everything and we had her for 13 years.  The last few months of her life she began to have neurological problems with her hind legs.

I had a very hard time with my GSP.  She finally "got it" at 5 months old.  Everyone tells me that their bladders don't seem to grow as quickly as the rest of them.  I have had dogs before, and never this much trouble.  I'll be picking the new GSP puppy up in September, I hope he's easier!

I had a little more trouble potty training my male pups than the females. The females knew almost immediately. The boys took a bit more. Atleast with pissing on the floor. I just every 1/2 hour or so would ask them if they wanted to go pp. Then it was like a game but they learned very well from that. Having them with another dog works great because the older one can teach the younger one. One thing I noticed to was when you get the boys excited they will drain their bladder while they are running around you. Because of the excitement. While they are pups anyways. Good luck with your' girl. She will come around -m she just needs a little time to adjust to her new home.