Mother breeds these fucking humungous white German Shepherds (fucking awful things)ah . . . the old toilet training trick for pups if you must leave them alone is to lock them in a room (preferably w/ out carpet & other chewables) and cover the floor completely w/ newspaper. Something appropriate, I recommend the People or Mirror, or if you want to make it more interesting in a scat kinda way, the Sport . . . But I digress. To begin w/ they shit over the entire floor as it's papered & doesn't matter, over time one reduces the amount of paper, and lo! The dogs respond by shitting only on the paper. In the end - after some weeks - you can expect the hound to shit in the corner that has the paper and nowhere else. Well, that's what mother says and has found first hand. And she's used to having upto 10 balls-of-white-fury shitting hither and thither for months at a time. Fruitcake shenannigans really . . . but it beats working I suppose.
I'm a great fan of puppy cages! The RSPCA actually recommend them, don't feel cruel for locking them up. Our dog loved hers, she really saw it as her own, safe place and would generally wander in there to sleep even if we were home and it was open.