Litter box or paper training your Chihuahua can be the ideal solution. Puppy pads are readily available, and will absorb the urine, making it easy to dispose of. Litter box training has also becoming much more common for small dogs and can be used much like a cat litter box. The puppy pad or litter box should placed in an area that makes the puppy feel secure and relaxed enough to potty easily.
Litter box or paper training is similar to outdoor potty training, except that instead of going to an outdoor potty spot, you are taking the puppy to an indoor potty spot. Paper training is not just putting down paper all over the house to contain the mess. If you put down paper everywhere, your puppy will pee everywhere. It will slow down the learning process, and your Chihuahua may never be completely house trained. It’s important to teach the pup to hold it until given the opportunity to access the paper. This means keeping a schedule just as rigorous as for outdoor training.
Pick an area of the house where it would be convenient to set up a potty spot. A kitchen corner or laundry room is often chosen because of easy cleanup. Set up a pen, and line it completely with paper or place the litter box in the pen. The potty area should be small, giving the puppy no choice about where to potty. Instead of taking the puppy to an outdoor potty location, place her in the potty pen. Reward her for success, and then let her out for supervised play.
After meals briefly confine the pup in her crate until it is potty time again. After five or ten minutes, bring your Chihuahua to the potty pen, praising for success. Place her in the potty pen every thirty to sixty minutes, as well as after playing with toys, getting some exercise, and sleeping, gradually increasing the amount of time between potty trips.
Once the puppy has emptied out successfully in the pen on the paper, let the pup explore the room. Again, this should be either done on leash or with 100-percent supervision in case the pup makes a mistake and you have to redirect her.
After several weeks of successful elimination on paper or litter, the dog should begin to seek out that substance to eliminate. Once the pup is keeping the rest of the pen clean and eliminating only on the paper or in the litter box, you can then attempt to enlarge the pen and move the paper. You want to move the paper around the room so that the puppy doesn’t form a location preference, meaning the pup can only potty in that location. You want your Chihuahua to seek the paper to potty on, not the location, just in case you need to move it at a later time.
Slowly increase the size of the pen, and then begin to give the pup access to the whole room while still seeking out her potty spot to eliminate. Over a period of weeks or months, increase the pup’s freedom to include the whole house. If at any time the puppy is having accidents, you must increase your supervision while decreasing the puppy’s freedom to new areas.