Why Small Breeds Can Be Harder to Potty Train

By Jessica Ennis, DVM, CVA

Training & Manners · August 24, 2026 · 4 min read

Small dogs aren't dumber about potty training, they're just louder about every mistake the schedule made for them.

Quick checklist before you blame the dog:

• Is your dog under 15 pounds getting outside every 45–60 minutes as a puppy, not every 2–3 hours?
• Are you actually watching for accidents, or could a Chihuahua-sized puddle be drying unnoticed under the couch?
• Are you standing outside long enough — several full minutes — for your dog to actually finish, not just sniff?
• Is your dog confined or supervised any time they’re not actively being watched?
• Have you ruled out a UTI or other medical cause if accidents started suddenly in a previously trained dog?

If you answered “no” to more than one of those, that’s probably where the real problem is — not the size of the dog.

The fork: is it the dog, or the math?

Every few months a client walks into my exam room convinced their Yorkie or Frenchie is somehow “not smart enough” to potty train, while their neighbor’s Labrador got it in three weeks flat. I hear a version of this constantly, and it’s almost never an intelligence problem. It’s a math problem, and small dogs lose that math every time.

Small breeds have smaller bladders and faster metabolisms than large dogs, so they need to relieve themselves more often — American Kennel Club: AKC notes that this alone means housetraining simply takes longer for a Chihuahua or dachshund than for a retriever, even with equally consistent owners. A puppy’s rough bladder-hold ceiling is often estimated at their age in months plus one hour, which means a 3-month-old of any breed tops out well under a workday — but a small adult dog never fully “graduates” out of needing more frequent breaks the way a 70-pound dog does.

What owners actually notice at week two

In my practice, the small-breed cases that stall out almost always share the same pattern. I worked with a 9-month-old Yorkie, about 5 pounds, whose owners swore he was “just stubborn.” He’d been reliable in the living room for a month, but they later admitted they hadn’t seen him have an accident there in weeks — they’d just stopped checking behind the recliner. When we moved the couch, there were at least four old spots. He hadn’t stopped having accidents; he’d just learned that a dime-sized puddle in a corner nobody walks through never gets noticed, let alone corrected. Within ten days of blocking off that space and going back to a 60-minute outdoor schedule, the accidents in that spot stopped entirely. The dog hadn’t changed. The visibility had.

That’s the second reason small dogs get tagged as “harder”: a puddle from a 6-pound dog is genuinely easier to miss than one from a 60-pound dog, so the accident goes uncorrected and, worse, gets reinforced as an acceptable indoor option long before anyone catches it.

What separates the dogs who actually get there

The dogs who succeed, regardless of size, tend to have owners doing three unglamorous things well: a genuinely frequent outdoor schedule tied to wake-ups, meals, and naps rather than the clock; real supervision or confinement any time the dog isn’t being watched; and enough patience outside — standing in one spot for several minutes — that the dog actually finishes instead of getting called back in mid-sniff. None of that is small-dog-specific. It’s just that small dogs punish sloppiness in any one of those three faster than a big dog does, because their margin for error is smaller from the start.

Crate training earns its reputation here for a real reason: most dogs instinctively avoid soiling the space they sleep in, and a properly sized crate turns that instinct into a training tool rather than a punishment. If you haven’t mapped out what the early weeks should look like hour by hour, A Puppy Potty-Training Schedule That Works is the place to start before you start second-guessing the dog.

When it’s not a training problem at all

One thing I check before assuming this is purely behavioral: sudden accidents in a previously reliable dog, especially small breeds prone to bladder stones or infections, deserve a vet visit before another round of schedule tweaks. That’s a medical rule-out, not a training fix, and no amount of consistency solves a UTI.

My verdict

I don’t think small breeds are harder to train in any meaningful sense — I think they’re harder to train sloppily. A Labrador can survive an inconsistent schedule and an owner who misses the occasional accident; a 5-pound dog usually can’t, because the physical margin and the visibility margin are both thinner. If you want the shortcut through the debate, it’s this: treat a small dog’s bladder capacity as real and non-negotiable, not as an excuse, and pair it with the same supervision and reward timing that works for any breed. Reward-based timing questions come up constantly in these cases too — if you’re deciding between a clicker and a verbal marker for catching the exact right moment outside, Clicker vs Verbal Marker Word is worth reading before you assume your marker timing is the issue. And if the accidents keep happening despite a tight schedule, a private session focused specifically on your floor plan and your dog’s cues, per Group Classes vs Private vs Online Training, usually closes the gap faster than another few weeks of guessing. Small dogs aren’t the exception to good housetraining — they’re just the breed where cutting corners shows up first.