A: No diapers for an 8-week old. She could develop infections from the air not being able to circulate properly on her body, and eating the diapers would be a risk, too! What she needs is a nice dog bed -- in the form of a dog crate -- to keep her safely confined when no one can watch her.

In order for her to get housetrained, someone will have to let her out at reasonable intervals. Housetraining is usually not completely physically possible for the dog until around 4 months of age, because bowel and bladder control have to mature first. If you paper-train a dog before training her to the outside, training her to wait and go outside later is almost as hard as starting all over again -- because you will have taught her to relieve herself in the house, and not to hold her bladder and bowels until the next trip outside.

If the dog must go too many hours at a time without a chance to go outside, papers may be your only choice, and in that case, she needs to be confined to one small, puppy-proofed room. You can use a baby gate to keep her there. Newspapers are safer than highly absorbent pads, because it's less likely she could eat enough to harm herself. Letting her roam the house with no one watching her is not safe for her. Chewing electrical cords is only one of many ways puppies can die from lack of supervision. Whenever she is not in her safe area, she needs to be in the same room with someone who is watching her.

But if there is no one available to housetrain the puppy, she's missing out on too much other attention that is absolutely necessary for a puppy at this age. Your son might need to consider offering her to a home that has more time for a puppy, so she can grow up into a good dog. I hope things work out well for everyone involved.