[Bailey_]

Housetraining can be tricky. Some dogs pick up on it quickly, while others take longer.

I am a firm believer that puppy pads tend to make this process LONGER. You're essentially training your pup to go to the washroom inside the house, and so of course there is going to be confusion because of this; which is not surprising why she used your bath mat. Any area rug becomes fair game to a pup that has been 'puppy pad' trained unfortuantley.

My suggestion: remove the pads altogether. Because your puppy is crate-trained, put her in the crate whenever you are going to be distracted. It's as simple as that. Prevention is key for house-training, as is consistancy and patience. If you're unsure that you want to put her in her crate, stick her on her leash and keep her physically with you so she can't 'sneak' away.

You need to make this whole process as simple for her as you can. Taking her out to use the washroom and keeping the scenario very basic - (when I housetrain, we take our dogs outside literally every half hour - alone, without the other dogs in the house - kneel down beside the dog on the grass, tap the ground and continue giving our 'washroom command', avoiding eye contact and touch so as to keep the dog from encouraging play). We're currently house-training a five year old papillionX, who has the same issue - he loves to sniff and chase leaves and attempt to eat as much as he can.
We keep him on a leash when we take him outside to use the washroom as at this point he can't be trusted to go outside by himself and not distract himself.

My oldest dog needs an extremly long walk in the morning. (1 mile to be exact). If we do anything less, she will literally go to the washroom right in front of you.

Many times, it's not neccessarily a matter of putting your dog on the grass to teach them where to go. For a dog to go #2, the process can take some time. They may need more stimulation in their bowels and for their body to be 'ready', which means you may have to get up an hour earlier in the morning and go for a walk - get her system moving - and THEN stand outside with her and wait, just like I have to do with our lab.

What are you feeding your dog?

Is it possible for you to get a little dog run, and set it up outside? That way you could put her in it whenever she goes out to the washroom and she'll be forced to keep away from the other areas. My husband built a simple dog run out of garden fencing in our yard to keep the dogs out of the flowers. It's nothing amazing, but it certainly gets the point across and they don't get into anything they shouldn't.