chihuahua from an unclean breeder

Question
Dear Karen,
My boyfriend recently bought me an 8 week old Chihuahua, who I adore, however there's one problem.  You guessed it, potty training.  I have had him for two weeks and originally thought it was possible I wasn't doing the crate training correctly, although it had worked with my previous dog.  He will potty in his crate even if I'm just away from home for an hour or so and had already let him out.  Now I find out that the home that my boyfriend got him from was, to say the least, gross.  He says the dogs pottied everywhere and that they just covered the carpets with newspaper.  Disgusting, I know.  I am having the hardest time re-training him.  Help!

Answer
If you've had this puppy for two weeks already, you should be making further progress than this as puppies don't even make a real effort to move away from their nest to potty until they are five weeks old. I would suggest that you first make sure that he doesn't have a bladder infection.

Also make sure that you don't have him in a crate that is too large as he will be tempted to potty in one end of that. Either get him a very tiny crate, or stuff boxes in the back of his so that he has very little room in it.... maybe only enough room to stand up and lie down, and not much more than that... and then let him out whenever he cries. Also be sure that you always feed him in his crate, as dogs don't like to potty where they eat.

The fact that the breeder let the dogs potty everywhere on papers has nothing to do with this problem, as, in fact,  the puppy would then be trained to potty *away* from his sleeping area (crate) rather than in it.

Here is a good link on housebreaking:
http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?cls=2&cat=1548&articleid=157