We trained our dog to go on the paper. He is very good at this. How difficult is it to re-train a dog to go outside? He’s not a puppy anymore. Any experiences out there?
I don’t have experience training a dog to go outside after it has been paper trained but I do have experience house breaking an adult dog which should have some similarities to what you want to do.
The good news is that your dog already has some degree of bladder control since it knows to only go on the paper. The bad news is that it is going to be confused when it starts to realize that it can’t do that anymore.
IANAAT, but this is how I would do it:
[ul]
[li]Move the paper to in front of the door you want the dog to use to ask to be taken outside.[/li][li]Hang a bell on the doorknob of that door (the dog will start to associate the ringing with going outside and will use it to ask to go out.[/li][li]When you see the dog using the paper take it outside and praise it like crazy if it does its business outside.[/li][li]After it seems to be getting the hang of this take away the paper, and scold it if you catch it going in the house and take it outside right away.[/li][/ul]
If the dog goes in the house when you are not home after you take the paper away you may have to consider crate training, which works wonders with completely unhousbroken dogs. If you don’t catch the dog in the act resist scolding it. You do not want the dog to associate you coming home with getting in trouble.
Good luck.
Well, a little bit of experience is all I have to offer. You might try re-training as if he were still a puppy. It means a lot of work on your part for the first month or so, but the dog should get the idea pretty quickly.
Establish “potty” times, and go with your dog outside to do his business. Say “potty” or whatever word you use and when the dog does go, praise him. Most dogs have to go when they get up in the morning, again about 20 min. after they eat, maybe once in the afternoon for some dogs. Then again at night after they eat and before bed. Take your dog out each time, same time every day, to establish a routine of “here is where we go to the bathroom”. I try not to set my dog up to fail, so if I want her to learn a new routine, I have to perform the routine with her the same way every day until it becomes habit for her.
If he goes on the paper, just clean it up and don’t say anything to him - you make it a non-event that way.
Hope this helps. 
Yes. Piece of cake. We retrained our dog and it wasn’t that bad. A little frustrating at first and a little extra work.
First step. Take away the paper.
Next step. Pay attention to your dog. In the first week or so, he’ll go to where the paper used to be when he had to go. This is your cue to invite him out for a walk. Naturally, he’ll do his business outside. After about a week he’ll start to make the association between toilet and outside. We were afraid that ours would use this to go out more often, but he apparently wasn’t that clever, so this was never a problem for us. We had a few accidents when we weren’t arround, but there weren’t that many and we just used verbal scolding and that seemed to be effective.
good luck
As previous posters have implied, consistency is very important here.
In order to achieve this re-training, you’ll have to go with your dog from the Land of Familiarity and Confidence, into the Zone of Confusion, and back out the other side into, um, the New Land of Familiarity and Confidence. There’s really no way to avoid that middle step.
Keep in mind that you will be teaching him two things: “Do your stuff outside,” and “We were wrong when we told you it was okay to go inside.”
Because of this, an important part of the process will be to teach him not to go where he used to. If he starts to look like he’s gonna do it, it’s very important to scold him. I know it’s not his fault, but you must let him know that this is now unacceptable behavior. If you have a good “no” going, that should be sufficient. When you see him start to go, make very sure to tell him no before you take him outside. Then of course praise him to the high heavens when he excretes in the great outdoors. And, at least for now, I agree that it’s good to choose one spot for now.
As aenea mentioned, it’s very useful to add to the dog’s vocabulary a command for going to the bathroom. I’ve always used “Do your stuff.” Use whatever you like, but of course be 100% consistent once you’ve chosen your mantra. Repeat the phrase over and over again whenever he’s doing the right thing in the right place. (A distinction that seems minor, but is not: don’t say “doyourstufdoyourstuffdoyourstuff…” or that will become the command. Say “do your stuff. [pause] Do your stuff. [pause]” etc.) Having a phrase that your dog associates with going to the bathroom is useful in many situations, like when you’re in a hurry and there’s a blizzard and the dog wants to play first and poop later, or when you’re trying to change your dog’s bathroom habits.
And I’ll agree with aenea again: don’t scold him when you come home and find he’s made a mistake in your absence. First of all, remember it’s what he learned was acceptable, and second, he’s likely, as aenea said, to associate the scolding with simply being home when you got there; the smartest dog is very unlikely to associate a present scolding with a past transgression, unless he really knows he did wrong. If it’s something he’s not sure about, as in the current situation, it’ll just prolong the confusion. (And rubbing his nose in it and scolding is only communicating that he’s getting scolded for having his nose rubbed in it. More confusion.)
Scold him firmly–and only–when you catch him in the act. The whole process will actually happen a lot faster if you do catch him in the act a few times: these are opportunities to communicate unequivocally what the behavior is that is now unacceptable.
And in the spirit of “I told you so,” even though I never told you so, for anyone else who’s considering it: don’t paper train a dog “for now” with the hope of re-training him later. If the dog’s going to go outside as an adult, then teach him that as a puppy.
(When I was a dog trainer, this was one of the most common reasons for one-time consults, next to barking and chewing.)
Taking away the paper will throw him that much sooner into confusion, which again is an unavoidable part of the process, so it might actually speed it up for you a bit. But there will be mistakes. So personally I would leave the paper down for the floor’s sake, but YMMV.
(And please understand that I’m not saying that confusion is good in and of itself. By “confusion” I simply mean that moment when his little doggy brain says, “Hey, wait a minute, what’s going on here?” He knows something up, and he will try to figure out what’s required of him.)