ikuto my 7month old goldie is still not potty trained!! he is also very undisciplined. the first step to house breaking is potty training so i would like to accomplish that! i have't used a crate since my parents think its not a good idea.. i tried to teach him to go do his business outside but have failed so far! i am thinking of getting a crate now.. will i be able to train him using a crate now?? how long should i keep him in the crate at night for?? should i keep the crate in my bedroom? please help! i have read about how to crate train a puppy but can i even consider ikuto to still be a puppy now?

Hi. I'll start off by saying that I'm absolutely no authority on GR puppies and our Maggie is 10 weeks old..only that I've had one for 2 weeks and I can tell what worked for us. Maggie has spent every night since we got her at 8 weeks in her crate. We put her in there between 10 and 11 pm, get up every 3 hours or so, or if she starts whining out of the blue, to let her do her thing. She hasn't had one accident in the crate. We treat her for going in and treat her when she comes out and she also sleeps in there for an afternoon nap while my wife gets some stuff done around the house. We have a large back yard and she gets plenty of running around while out of the crate and we exercise her lot.

Night 1: Just the crate with a divider, a small blanket and some toys with the crate in our bedroom about 8 feet from the foot of our bed.
She wailed all night. It was awful.
Night 2: We moved the crate to the edge of the bed where Maggie could see us.
Turned the TV on for some background noise.
We put a blackout curtain over the crate to create a "den" type feeling.
Wrapped two beach towels in two of our previously worn t-shirts.
Wore her out playing.
Gave her a treat for going into the crate.
Prepared for another night of wailing.
She gently whined for about 2 minutes and went to sleep until I woke her up to go out.
Nights 3 and 4 went on the same way.

Night 5, we moved the crate out into the kitchen, and turned on the stereo for some background noise and it's been that way every night since.

I hope you can get something useful out of all that and that it works for your older puppy. We thought we were doomed that first night, then everything changed the night we adjusted her crate.

She never goes in her crate, and we pick her up and carry her out to the yard after a long time in the crate so she doesn't have the opportunity to squat. We are having a little difficulty getting her to signal us before going to the bathroom, but I think it's because we started her out on papers in the house because Sandy was lurking nearby the weekend we picked her up and our backyard was not a safe or nice place to be.

Sorry I rattled on, but I know how much I appreciated all of the advice i found on here, so I wanted to share a success story.

Good Luck!
Ed