Potty training our dog

We adopted a little pug in May, almost a year ago. She was 2.5 then, so she was already potty trained, thankfully. She was perfect in so many ways - she never chews up our stuff, she doesn't bark or bite, and she's potty trained. The only problem with her was that she only peed once a day, and only if you took her on really long walks. She could hold her pee, so if you just took her on a short walk, she just wouldn't go. We didn't think peeing once a day was healthy, so we would take her on long walks three times a day - very time consuming, like may 1.5 hours a day. Our plan was to get her used peeing more, then start shortening the walks.

We also bought her a patio potty that we put on the balcony that she could use for emergencies or when we were in a hurry. It's fake grass over kitty litter. You can see her laying on it in the picture. We had a neighbor's beagle pee on it twice to make it more interesting, but Angel just did not find it interesting at all. She would sniff it, but never even attempt to go to the bathroom on it.

Well it's been almost a year now. We started to think it would never happen, that we would be taking her on these long walks forever. And we were a little worried because when we have a baby we won't have the time to take her on these walks. But then in the last month everything has turned around. She has started going in the garden by our building most of the time (though this is not a guarantee). And when she has an emergency, she has started begging to go on the balcony to use the patio potty. It's amazing. I don't know how it happened. I actually gave up on it long ago, but K was more patient and persistent than I was.