puppy peeing

Question
QUESTION: hey Marcus, me and my 12 week old puppy are getting along great, i managed to get him house broken in about 3 weeks! i was delited. but recelently i had to go away for afew days and leave him with a friend and when i came back he was going to the toilet all over the place. please help!! also when i come down in the morning he gos CRAZY! jumping arround and pee's uncontrollability, he used to do this a little before but now its just mad.
thanks in advance, a happy irish man.


ANSWER: Unfortunately any time at this age you have a situation change, housebreaking is often the first to go out the window.  The solution - start from scratch.  It shouldn't be that big of a deal, but you have to remind the puppy that "this is how we do this, remember?"  And usually it only takes a couple of days for the dog to remember the rules.  (Puppies are a lot like teenaged humans - they will do whatever they can get away with.)  So just act like you just got the dog and work him through the rules of the house and going outside.

As for the jumping around, this one is always tough, but if he hasn't seen you in a while and you come in - it's a big production for him and there's excitement of all sorts going on.  Your job is to try to eliminate that and direct it as quickly as possible to going outside.  Calmly greeting the dog, getting down on his level (instead of towering over him), providing a surprise treat (just giving him something to chew on) all can help.

Also, how long has the dog been alone when he's jumping around like that?

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: he would usually be in bed by 12 midnight and up again at 9am. the only other problem is that his house breaking was almost an accident... I did the usual take him out every couple of hours to go to the toilet and remembered at what time i fed him and things, but he was going during the night around where he sleeps and one day i just took all the news paper off the ground and he stopped. so should i go back to putting the paper on the floor??

Answer
A 12 week old puppy should not be expected to hold his bladder for any more than about 4 hours.  I would suggest getting him up in the middle of the night to help out.  The paper on the floor might not be a bad idea either.  

Keep in mind that a dog's bladder is about large enough as a puppy to not need to go the bathroom in hours for the number of months the dog is old plus one.  Therefore, a three month old pup can wait for about four hours, a five month old - six hours.  In no case should a dog be expected to wait more than 8 hours.