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Thanks for all the suggestions. The puppy seems to be getting better with the grass and picking up scents. He just seems content to use the house as his bathroom. Any suggestions for getting him to "ask" to go outside? If I wouldn't take him out he would never ask.

You have a crate, right? He is going when he's out of the crate?
http://www.leerburg.com/housebrk.htm

I'm getting confused here - are you trying to housetrain this dog or trying to desensitize it to being on grass?

For desensitizing your pup to grass, food treats in the grass is a great suggestion.

However, if you are trying to get your pup to go potty outside, I'm thinking that food treats in the grass is counterproductive. Ed has a lot of information on houstraining on this page. Dogs will continue to "go" on whatever surface they are taught to "go" on as pups - this is one reason it can be so difficult to housetrain pet store/puppy mill and paper trained puppies. I have a backyard breeder/shelter dog that I got at 4 months old - it took me until she was about 22 months old to houstrain her. You can go back on this forum and read my struggles with this - the dog had simply learned that her crate was the place to "go." (Of course I made plenty of mistakes too.) This is the reaon for putting out the paper on the grass. If the grass is an issue now, I don't see why you couldn't put paper on the cement and gradually move it a little closer to the grass each day until it is on the grass, and then gradually lay out smaller pieces of paper until none is needed.

Teaching a pup to go outside is one task. Once this is learned you can begin teaching the dog to "ask" by teaching the dog to ring a bell, etc. These are two separate things.

My suggestion of food was only to help the pup overcome its fear of grass and get it comfy being in grass. Definitely not for housetraining! Just wanted to clear that up. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />