night time housebreaking woes

Question
Hi, I'm a fellow expert in the hamsters category. I have a question about my 3 month old male papillon puppy. We have had him a little over a week, and he just turned 3 months on the 25th. He is a quick learner, and goes potty outside every time we take him, always pee pee, and sometimes poopy, much to my happy praise.

He holds his pee pee like a champ every night until morning. Unfortunately he doesn't hold his poopy like a champ. His last meal comes at 6pm, and goes in his crate around 2am, when my husband and I go to sleep. He has the chance to poopy outside before he is put to bed, but he has never poopped at this last outing.  He will always poopy once after dinner, and sometimes twice, but there is always crate poopy in the morning.

His crate is quite small, he has no corners to hide in, and usually his poop is front and center. We have removed his lambskin cage insert, which didn't help. He eats Eukanuba puppy food at 1/4th a cup twice a day, 12 and 6.

Are we doing something wrong?
Should we just wait until he grows out of it?
Is he going to get used to this behavior so it's hard to break?
Thanks for any insight on the problem!

Answer
Hi Heather!

Your little puppy is just now acquiring sphincter control. It doesn't sound to me like you are doing anything wrong. A couple of things come to my mind about this little fellow:

1) It could be that the Eukanuba doesn't agree with him. Many dogs cannot tolerate grains well or there could be an ingredient in the food that just isn't agreeing with him.
OR
2) He could have some intestinal parasites.
You don't mention the consistency of his stool and I assume he's been dewormed but he could have other parasites other than worms.  Take a sample to your veterinarian just to rule out any physical illnesses that might be part of the problem.

3) If your veterinarian gives the all clear sign, I wonder if you can walk him around/play with him for 20 minutes or so right before the 2 AM bedtime.  Playing, walking, running often stumulates the need to poop in dogs. If you could get that last one out before bedtime and he's healthy, he should make it to morning.

He is still quite young and if he's healthy and the food is right for him, I'm sure he'll develop the control necessary to make it through the night.

Stay the course. Get him checked out and consider changing to a different food.

Good luck!

Jaz