As some 'Dopers may know, jeevwoman and I are the guardians of two occasionally frustrating but often adorable pound mutts, named Tino (for former Yankee and current Devil Ray Tino Martinez) and Willow (for the TV character). Tino is about 4, and Willow about 2. We don’t know too much about either of their lives before they came to us.
Tino is basically completely housebroken. The only time he’s had accidents in recent memory has been when he was adjusting to my regular presence in the house when I was dating jeevwoman. Eventually, he got over that.
Willow’s housebreaking is definitely a work in progress. It’s been frustrated by a combination of things, such as:
(1) she gives no notice when she needs to go;
(2) inconsistency about going when we let her out, i.e. she wouldn’t always do her business when we’d take her outside;
(3) inability to crate her. Her brother is not crated, hates crates (not uncommon for pound dogs) and, in our view, has earned the right to not be crated.
(4) limited ability to confine her without a crate. There is no door that closes off our upstairs and downstairs. Before Willow came into our lives, Tino would stay downstairs, where he had his toys and his dog-hair covered chair. But Willow proved that she could jump over the 32" baby gate that we used to keep Tino downstairs. We tried using a 48" gate, but learned that, because of the construction of our house, we could not anchor the gate securely. Willow was able to knock enough of it down to climb up.
At first, we decided to try and give them run of the house. However, we were finding accidents downstairs. So then we cut off part of the downstairs. Still found accidents. Then we decided to give them all of the upstairs and the stairs to the downstairs, but gate off the downstairs itself. We found accidents on the stairs. So then we cut off all of the downstairs, including the stairs.
No accidents while we were gone. We would sometimes find that she had gone in the middle of the night, but during the critical period of during the day while we’re gone, she was basically accident free.
After several weeks of no accidents while we were gone, we moved the gate to halfway down the stairs. We’ve been at about two weeks of that, and we’ve only had one accident, which might be attributable to exigent circumstances. (Our alarm system went off because of a malfunctioning sensor, and the sound may have spooked her.)
Willow has also become much better about going when she’s outside. She’s almost automatic to go first thing in the morning when we let her outside (5:30-6:00 most days) and last thing in the evening (9:30- 10:00). We treat and praise lavishly. Tino also has been benefitting from more treats, even though he’s already housebroken.
Anyway, jeevwoman is at home today, taking some “use 'em or lose 'em” vacation days. She had to leave for a dentist appointment, and decided to leave the dogs with all of the upstairs and part of the downstairs, since she was only going to be gone for an hour. She comes back, and finds that Willow scurried downstairs to poop.
So, we are making progress (I think), but it appears she still thinks of downstairs as equivalent to “outside.” Admittedly, we spend a lot more time upstairs than down, but the computer is downstairs, and I’m there for some time each weekend futzing around. So it’s not like we’re never down there.
Any advice on how we can get her to recognize “downstairs” as “inside”?