Our 10 month old dog has been trained to use pads to pee on and now I want to teach her to go outside. How do we teach her to use the yard as her bathroom?

Ed,

Great website. I have a question that I did not see covered in the Q&A section. My fiance and I have a 10 month old King Charles Spaniel. Before recently moving in with me she lived on the 3rd floor of an apartment complex and worked long hours. Therefore she trained our dog to pee on the pads. Now they have moved in with me and while my backyard is somewhat small it does have grass and I would prefer the dog use the backyard rather than the pads. Also, the dog poops on my rug and not the pads. My fiance thinks it's because the rug is ugly, which it slightly is, but before we get a new rug we have to get the poop outside.

I have started keeping the dog in the crate when we are not home and taking it out first thing, however after two days the dog has yet to go to the bathroom outside. I have also tried putting a pad in the grass in the yard. We have also moved the only pad in the house near the backdoor and put a bell on the backdoor knob which we would like to get her to use to notify us when she needs to go out.

So now that you understand more about our situation do you have any advice on how to get our dog to start using the yard? Any thoughts are greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Eric