Boqui shredded his disposable pads. Consistently, as if destroying them was the only logical use for them. We’d come home to confetti. The longer it went on, the more we worried about what he was ingesting, because disposable pads aren’t designed to be eaten.
For a few days we didn’t leave him alone for more than an hour. That’s not sustainable.
Switching to washable pads solved it immediately. There’s nothing to shred, no absorbent filling to pull out, nothing that comes apart in a way that creates a risk. That was the reason we switched. Everything else, like the cost savings, and the environmental benefit, came after.
*If you recently got a new Pom puppy and are still building out your full setup, the *New Pom Puppy Checklist covers what we recommend organized by how urgently we needed it.
Why Poms keep pads out forever
Pomeranians have notoriously small bladders and strong opinions about house training. Most Pom owners will tell you the same thing: it takes longer than expected, and even a fully trained Pom has days where they’d rather not go outside.
We keep a pad out at all times. Just in case.
The problem with disposables
Disposable pads work through superabsorbent polymers (the same technology used in diapers) combined with leak-proof plastic backing, fragrance, and sometimes attractant chemicals. None of it is designed to be ingested.
Used as intended, they’re fine. But a puppy treating one as a chew toy is a different situation. And even if your puppy isn’t a shredder, the environmental math is hard to ignore once you realize pads are part of the house permanently.
Once you accept that pads are part of the house indefinitely, the math shifts. A washable pad that lasts years costs pennies per use. Disposables every day, forever, add up to real money and environmental cost.
That said, we still keep a small supply of disposables around. They’re the right call for post-vaccine days when accidents are more likely, for diarrhea incidents where you want something you can just throw away, and for travel when washing isn’t an option. Washables handle the day-to-day; disposables handle the exceptions.
How washable pads have gotten better
When we got our first Pomeranian ten years ago, the washable pad category was thin. The options were stiff, slow to dry, and not particularly absorbent.
What’s available now is genuinely different. Modern washable pads have:
- Multi-layer construction that locks moisture in and keeps the surface dry
- Fast-dry top layers that wick liquid away from the surface
- Anti-slip backing that holds position on hard floors without shifting
- Sizes designed for pens, with no bunching at the edges
The fast-dry improvement is what sold us. Ours come out of the wash and are dry within 30 minutes hanging flat.
What we use and how
The Green Lifestyle Washable Puppy Pee Pads* are what we use and recommend. The absorbency holds up through heavy use, high heat washing is safe (you’re actually sanitizing them, not just rinsing) and the anti-slip backing keeps the pad in place even when the puppy is doing laps.
They come in a range of sizes, so worth measuring your pen or carrier before ordering. We have two: an 18×24 in the carrier and a 34×36 in the puppy pen. The larger one stays in the pen full-time; the smaller one travels with us and doubles as a backup inside for our senior Pomeranian, Bella. When we have company over, we just fold it up and put it away.
For washing:
- Remove solids first (we pick up the whole pad and shake it into the trash)
- Machine wash warm or hot (hot actually sanitizes)
- Air dry flat. It dries more quickly than you’d think
- No special detergent needed, but fragrance-free is worth it for a dog who’ll be sniffing the pad all day
Washable pads aren’t perfect, but the benefits win
Washable pads ask more of you than disposables do. Solids have to come off before the wash. You launder on demand rather than on your own schedule. The upfront cost is higher.
For us, none of that outweighs what we get back: no shredding risk, no chemicals we can’t control, no daily bin run, and a pad that costs pennies per use once you’ve bought it. Three Pomeranians in, we still use them every day.
The rest of the setup
The pad is one piece of a pen setup that actually works. See the full Poms’ Favorites for everything else we keep in rotation.