A puppy at eight weeks can hold its bladder for roughly its age in months plus one, in hours. That's three hours for a two-month-old. It isn't a discipline problem — it's plumbing that hasn't finished developing.
Which means house training isn't about teaching a rule. It's about arranging your day so the puppy is outside at the moments it needs to go, often enough that the right place becomes the habit.
The schedule is the whole method
Take them out:
- Immediately after waking, every time — including naps
- Within ten minutes of eating or drinking
- After any burst of play
- Before bed
- And every two hours in between, whether they ask or not
Wait with them. Say nothing until they go, then praise the second they finish — not when you get back inside, which teaches that coming in is the good bit.
The cleaning rule nobody mentions
Never clean an accident with anything containing ammonia. Urine contains ammonia, so an ammonia cleaner leaves a signal saying this is the toilet. Use an enzymatic cleaner, which breaks the compounds down rather than covering them.
A dog's nose is good enough to find a spot you cleaned a week ago with the wrong product.
Where pads help and where they hurt
Pads are genuinely useful for flats with stairs, for overnight, and for the weeks before vaccinations are complete. They're a problem if you use them as the permanent answer, because you're teaching a puppy that indoors is acceptable — and later unteaching it.
Use them as a bridge, in one fixed place, and move that place closer to the door over a few weeks. Washable pads save you a bin bag a week and a small fortune — house training takes months, not days.
Night time
Expect one or two wake-ups until about four months. Keep them boring: no lights, no talking, no play. Out, wait, back to bed. A puppy that gets a conversation at 3am will ask for one every night.
When it's going backwards
A puppy that was reliable and suddenly isn't is usually one of three things: a urinary infection, a change at home, or a growth stage. The first needs a vet — and it's common enough in young dogs that it's worth ruling out before you assume you've done something wrong.