Problems Dog training.

Question
I am raising a 1 year old(human years) Bichon Frise and we successfully been able to train her to do her business on potty mats.Now we wan't to take it a step further and train her to go potty outside. She went once and is not going again. We take her out in the morning for 5 min. And if she doesn't go we put her in her cage for about 30 min. We try again and extend the minutes in her cage to an hour and so on. Now she is refusing to eat or drink so she doesn't have to go potty. We have schedule but she still refuses. What do we do?

Answer
Hi Nathan.  You've trained her well to use her potty mats!  In order to transfer this behavior to outside, take a used pad to the yard and put it where you want her to eliminate.  When you're pretty sure she has to go, put her on leash and take her to the pad.  Don't talk to her, don't make eye contact, just stand there and be an anchor.  If she uses the pad, give her a treat that she really likes.  If she doesn't go, then put her back in the crate as you've been doing.  

Once she's going on the pad outside, slowly decrease the size of the pad each time you take her out.  Fold it or cut it to 3/4 size, then to 1/2 size, then to 1/4 size, etc., until it's so small that she's going more on the grass than on the pad.  At that point, you should be able to elinate it altogether.

Key points:
Go outside with her on leash.
Reward when she goes.
Crate to avoid mistakes in the house.
Feed on a regular schedule - put food down twice a day and pick up what's not eaten after 10 minutes.

Dogs develop a substrate preference for elimination very early in life and this can be challenging to overcome.  That's why most trainers don't recommend the potty pads if you really want the dog to go outside eventually.  However, with some work, I'm sure you can make this happen.  Good luck!