We have a 9 week old Schnauzer. She is very smart. She stays in her crate all night and for short times during the day without much crying. I work at home so I can watch her a lot. I take her outside after crate time and after eating. Other times she is already asking to go outside using a bell. When we take her outside she pees immediately. Then she like to wander and pee several more times before she does number 2, if necessary.

At first she stayed near us, but now that she is more comfortable she is wandering away. So we now take her out on a leash. She doesn't like it but is getting used to it.

My problem is that we would like for her to go (at least number 2) in the same area of the yard. How do we teach her to do this without frustrating her and maybe discouraging her from going outside? She's already doing so well.

The leash approach is probably your best bet.

In the end, I've never really enforced the one spot concept, though I always start off with that intention. Eventually though, I'm just happy the dog is going outside, and I accept that having a GSD, my yard is going to look awful.

Hopefully someone with more experience (or success, anyway) can post how they managed it.

 Quote: alyssa myracle

Hopefully someone with more experience (or success, anyway) can post how they managed it.

Oh! I will! I will!

Pamela, we brought Hans home when he was 9 weeks old. I had the yard landscaped and had a 25' x 25' area in one corner of the yard set off with railroad ties and filled with pea gravel. Every time we took Hans out to pee and poop we took him, on leash, to that area. Every time.

When he was 6 months old I was playing with him in the backyard, throwing a ball. At one point he dropped the ball, ran over to the pea gravel and relieved himself. Since then he has only gone outside of the pea gravel once, and that was my fault. He's 3 now. We just open the door and let him out and off he goes. Or if we're outside playing with him, or we've left him outside, he just goes to that area. We have Scotts LawnService fertilize our lawn. Every time they send someone new over they express amazement that we have both a big dog and a good looking backyard.

Based on his behavior, I've come to the conclusion that 25' x 25' is larger than he needs. He only really uses about 1/3 of that area.

So based on my experience:

Set off the area somehow. We used railroad ties and filled it with pea gravel.

Build the habit. We took him out to go on a leash until, when he was 6 months old, we observed him using the area on his own.

Keep it clean. The one time Hans went outside of his area was when we had gone too long between scooping it. We cleaned it and sprayed it with a diluted chlorine solution. That took care of the problem.

Teach him a command. We use "go potty". Every time we took him over there on leash we said "go potty". Now he can run out, relieve himself, and if we say "go potty" he'll go back and pee a little bit more.

I hope this helps.