Dog pees in crate and keeps us up all night
Ok, so this may be a little long so I apologize in advance. I acquired my dog almost 3 months ago. He is a miniature pinscher and the vet said he's about 8 months - 1 year. He was found stray on the street so we have no background information on him. After having him a month we took him to be neutered not only to prevent reproduction, but to help cut down his energy level with moving non-stop and wanting to pee on everything and of course for many other reasons. I researched min pins and their needs and I understand his breed is a high energy level breed so my husband and I try to meet those needs as best as possible. We're fortunate in a sense he is energetic because it makes us more active. Unfortunately, we live in a 1.353sqft apartment so we try to take him out on walks and sometimes runs as often as we can. There are unfortunately no dog parks that we can make to during the week after work (5:30p when we get home) due to them closing at sundown to be able to take him and let him run. Basically, his weekly schedule is wake up at 6am, take outside to the bathroom, eat and water, let him be outside his cage while we're getting ready sometimes play if there's time, take out again and sometimes my husband will run with him for 10min or so, place in crate (small enough to just stand up and turn around) from 7-5 (when we work), come home and take him out, feed again at 6p, let him run and play in the apartment, take out 1-2 more times before bed, we remove his water 2-3hours before bed, place in crate around 10p or so for the night and start over. On the weekends, he's hardly in his crate except to sleep. The problem is he never has a chance to pee in the house due to us taking him out when possible but the problem is and the question late is he pees consistently everyday in his crate. He pees in it before we get home from work and if we don't take him out at 3am he pees in his crate then. It doesn't seem to bother him but it bothers us. We had to buy him a second bed so we could switch out the beds for him to have one to sleep on. We wash the beds everyday and give him a bath almost everyday due to the smell. My husband and I are getting no sleep every night due to this, which is effecting our work and we have tried everything possible to prevent it. This morning was a little different, which is why I'm writing this: He woke us up at 2am whining, crying and almost peeing himself in the crate. My husband took him out and we went back to sleep. At 10min until 5am, he woke us up again howling and crying so I got up and checked his bed and it was fine. My husband said he's probably hungry and thirsty ( he hadn't had water since around 7pm the night before to prevent peeing this early in the morning but it's not working apparently). I got up and fed him and he drank water and I decided there was no point going back to sleep when I have to wake up at 6am anyway. The removal of water, ignoring him, positive reinforcement when he goes outside, etc. is not working. We've paid to take him to a trainer but not for behavior, just for the basics like sitting, laying down, etc. because the 3am problem and peeing in the crate didn't occur until after the neutering (we took him to training before he was neutered). We don't know what to do at this point since we've tried to stay on top of everything to prevent it. I'm worried he may have some kind of bladder infection that's causing him to not be able to hold it or he's just misbehaving and we're not doing something right. It's become a routine and dogs needing a routine, I'm trying to stop it before it gets worse. I apologize for this being so long, but I wanted to be thorough in explaining everything we've tried so we know what we've missed. Thank you and we await a response.