olde english bulldogge puppy

Question
Hi there -

We have a ten-week-old male olde english bulldogge puppy that we've had for two weeks. We are attempting to crate train him although it's slow going, as both of us work Mon-Fri. While I hate having him go potty in the house, crating him all day long is obviously not an option, so during the week, we keep him in a locked off area of the pantry with his crate in there with the door open from about 8 am to noon, when a friend comes to give him playtime/pottytime/etc., and then again until about 4 pm, when I get home. He likes his crate and we do lock him in it for quiet time 1-2 hours at a time on weekends and in the late evenings before his final pottytime before bed. When we do lock him in his crate, he's good as gold but ever since we got him, he's never been able to go all night (as in overnight) without both peeing and defecating inside of it, towel or no towel. This concerns me as does the thought of retraining him not to use the pantry floor as his potty place once he's older and able to withstand the crate for longer periods of time. (Please note - we don't ever intend to keep him in there for longer than four hours and that only when he's old enough for some concerted-effort crate training.) I'm worried that we're just confusing him by the pantry/crate combo but am not sure what else to do.

Our other problem is getting puppy to get along with our nine-year-old female pug, who's very sweet in temperament but used to being queen of all she surveys. We keep pup and pug separate except for supervised sessions outside where we let them get to know each other, but said sessions aren't going well. Puppy relentlessly charges at Queen Pug in efforts to get her to play. She's not having any of it but no amount of growling or nipping at him deters him. We've tried to let them work it out but every time they've been exposed to one another, the "playing" turns ugly and escalates into a lot of stress on the pug's part and a lot of increasingly tough posturing on the puppy's part. We make sure to separate them before it gets out of hand and give the pug lots of love so she doesn't think we're punishing her with devil puppy, but I'd really like them to learn how to at least tolerate each other before puppy gets too big. Any advice?

Thanks heaps,
Jennifer

Answer
You certainly expect a lot from a puppy 10 weeks of age. It will be months probably before he stops soiling his crate especially if he's left for 4 hours in it. Puppies can only go about 3 hours before they have to pee. They're babies. You're really going to have to be patient with him for many weeks to come. Stick to the schedule you have and eventually he will grow up enough to stay clean.

As for the rough housing with the pug, again, he's a baby. All his social skills so far were learned from his siblings i.e. rough housing, biting, growling etc. This is what he knows until you teach him otherwise. You should let the Pug do the teaching in this case now, before he gets too big to care if she bites him.

I strongly suggest you get this puppy into obedience classes as soon as they will take him. You might also consider puppy kindergarten if it's available. Oldies are wonderful dogs but they require training and socialization at a very early age otherwise, they rise to the occasion of running the show quite easily.