House Training A Yorkie

Why Your Yorkie Isn't Potty Training Despite Trying Everything

Most people fail at house training a Yorkie because they're treating the problem like a training issue when it's actually a management issue. I learned this after wasting three months with a Yorkie who kept having accidents in the exact same three spots on our hardwood floor despite what felt like perfect crate training and a strict schedule. The breakthrough came when I stopped thinking about teaching the dog and started thinking about preventing the mistake entirely. Yorkies are not like Golden Retrievers. They have a smaller bladder, a faster metabolism, and a temperament that makes them prone to marking behavior rather than simple elimination problems. The average Yorkie can hold it for about one hour per month of age, which means even an adult Yorkie is physically limited to maybe 6-8 hours between breaks during the day, and realistically more like 4-6 hours if you want zero accidents. A 12-week-old puppy? Maybe 2-3 hours maximum. Most people set their dogs up to fail by working full days and expecting the dog to just figure it out.

House Training A Yorkie: The Method That Actually Works

Start with what I call the containment-and-clock system rather than free-roaming with occasional outdoor trips. Confine the Yorkie to a single room or a properly sized crate when you can't actively supervise. That's it. When you do let them roam, they're on a leash attached to you or in a small playpen with a puppy pad corner. The key insight nobody tells you is that space equals opportunity for a Yorkie. Give a Yorkie a whole apartment and they'll treat the entire carpet as a potential bathroom. Give them a bathroom-sized tile area and they'll learn to hold it. Here's the part that seems backwards: you should take your Yorkie out more often than you think is necessary, not less. The standard advice of "take them out after eating, drinking, playing, and sleeping" is correct but incomplete. You also need to take them out on a timer between those events. For a puppy, that's every 2-3 hours on a timer. For an adult, every 4-6 hours. Set alarms. It feels excessive until you realize most accidents happen during the downtime between planned potty breaks, when the dog is either bored or getting too excited from play. Use a specific command word every single time you're outdoors in the potty area, and wait. I mean wait. I've seen people spend maybe 30 seconds outside before giving up and going back in. A Yorkie needs 5-10 minutes of actual outdoor time to do their business. Stand there. Be boring. Don't engage with them unless they're eliminating. When they go, mark it immediately with a quiet "yes" or whatever your chosen marker word is, then reward with a high-value treat within 2 seconds of finishing, not before. The timing of the reward matters more than most trainers admit. If you reward them while they're still going, you're accidentally reinforcing the behavior of going while being petted, which can make cleanup harder.

Accidents happen. When they do, clean the area with an enzymatic cleaner, not ammonia-based cleaners or bleach. Enzymatic cleaners break down the uric acid crystals that regular cleaners miss. I found this out the hard way when my Yorkie kept returning to the same spot on the rug even though I was mopping it daily with a standard household cleaner. The smell was still there to her nose. Once I switched to an enzymatic product and let it sit for the full recommended contact time, the revisit behavior stopped within a week.

The Counter-Intuitive Stuff Nobody Talks About

First, night training is usually harder than day training, and not just because puppies can't hold it. Yorkies are crepuscular, meaning they're naturally more active at dawn and dusk. If you're putting the dog to bed at 10pm and waking up at 7am, you're expecting an 9-hour stretch during their least-active period, which should be fine in theory. But if you feed them at 7pm, that meal won't be processed until well into the night. Shift feeding times to earlier in the evening and watch the nighttime accidents drop significantly. Second, the crate method works but has a critical failure point. A crate that's too big becomes a bedroom with a bathroom corner, and Yorkies will pee in one corner and sleep in the other. The crate needs to be just large enough for the dog to stand up, turn around, and lie down. If it's a convertible crate that expands, use the divider to keep the interior tight. I had a friend whose Yorkie was crate-trained for weeks and then suddenly started soiling the crate because the family had expanded the available space without retraining. The dog had decided the larger area included a potty zone. Third, and this is important: some Yorkies develop a habit called "submissive urination" that gets mistaken for incomplete house training. This isn't a behavioral problem, it's a reflex. The dog pees a little when you approach, when you scold them for an accident, or when they're overly excited. No amount of positive reinforcement will fix this. The workaround is to ignore it completely. Don't make eye contact, don't speak, don't touch the dog when they're greeting you. Keep greetings at a minimum energy level until the dog matures out of it, which for most Yorkies happens around 12-18 months. I spent months trying to "train out" what turned out to be a submissive response, and it only stopped when I stopped reacting to it entirely.

When This Approach Won't Work

House training a Yorkie has real limitations. If your dog has a urinary tract infection, nothing in this guide will help and you should take them to a vet immediately. Recurrent accidents in a previously trained dog are almost always medical until proven otherwise. I learned this when my Yorkie, who had been reliably house-trained for eight months, suddenly started having multiple accidents per day. The schedule hadn't changed. The routine was solid. A vet visit revealed a mild UTI that was resolved with antibiotics within a week. Another scenario where this method struggles is if you live in an apartment without easy outdoor access. Yorkies are small enough that some owners carry them down stairs and outside for every single elimination, which is unsustainable and can delay training. The alternative is a well-managed indoor potty system using artificial grass pads or a dog door leading to a balcony area, but these require their own training protocol and aren't suitable for all dogs. Some Yorkies develop a preference for pads that makes transitioning outdoors very difficult later. The honest timeline for house training a Yorkie is 4-6 months for basic reliability, and 8-12 months for consistent success with occasional setbacks. Any promise of "potty train in a week" is misleading. Yorkies are stubborn by nature and they will test boundaries. Consistency matters more than any specific technique. If you're inconsistent with your schedule, no amount of treats or clickers will compensate. Take the dog out at the same times, every day, without exception. The dog will learn the pattern faster than you think if you stop varying the routine based on how you feel that day.