Embarassingly enough, I’ve moved back home after college with my parents and my dog, but my mother hasn’t stopped screaming at me yet about the dog peeing on the carpet. (I mean, he’s been peeing on the carpet since we got him, eight or nine years ago, but you’d think from the way she yells that I piddle in the corners myself. Yeah, he’s my dog, yeah, I did leave him with them for all those years, but the reason he’s not trained very well is that they weren’t consistent, and you can’t be the only one in your house trying to get the dog to do what you want.) Anyway, they just got this nice new wooden floor, and my mother caught him at it again. So the question is this:
Any good methods to housetrain an incompletely housetrained older dog? I mean, it seems like it would be harder now because we’re the ones who let him slip by like this for so many years. What should we do? He seems to usually do it at night when we aren’t watching to discipline him.
And what can we do about the rug? Not to mention the floor?
My mother wants to get rid of my puppy-dog - surely one of you has some ideas!
First, are you sure this is a training issue? You may simply not be letting him out enough, especially if he mostly just does it in the middle of the night. Maybe he just really needs to go. He should be let out by the last person to go to bed, and they should make sure he does his business before he is let back in. Someone else could also get up and let him out during the night if necessary, though a healthy dog should be able to wait 8 hr. to go out.
Which is another thing - are you absolutely sure the dog is 100% healthy? There are some health conditions that can result in a dog needing to go out frequently and not being able to ‘hold it’ well.
If it is a training issue, you are right that it is very late to correct this, and it will be difficult at best to do, especially if there are people in the household who aren’t going to reinforce the correct behavior. Yelling at him isn’t going to work, especially if it’s after the fact because he’ll have no idea why he’s being yelled at. He needs reward and praise for doing the right thing at exactly the time he is doing it.
The only thing you can really do if it is a training problem is to pretend he’s a puppy all over again and re-train him. If you need guidance on how to do this, there are a ton of Internet websites with step-by-step instructions. If that doesn’t seem to be working, call your vet or the local SPCA and get a referral to a trainer who uses positive training methods on dogs with long-standing behavior problems. They can help you.
A little whiz won’t hurt a good quality wooden floor, so your mom shouldn’t worry about that. If the dog has been peeing on the carpet for 8 or 9 years, there really isn’t much you can do about that except buy new carpet after the dog is reliably trained.
Well, this experience might be relevant, or it might not… we acquired our dog unhousetrained when he was nearly a grownup.
A few things that helped us:
We put a bell on the doorknob, and rang it every time before taking him out. Eventually he started ringing it with his nose, himself, to signify he needed to go out. We no longer use the bell (four years later) but it was crucial at the time–helped him communicate with us and understand the cause and effect of asking to go out.
We really ramped up the praise when he did pee outside. We’d say “go pee! Go pee!” when he went out, and when he did the deed we’d act like our team just won the superbowl AND we’d won the lottery PLUS Ed McMahon was pulling in the drive with Publisher’s Clearinghouse. Oh, sure, we felt (and looked) like idiots, but this is what it took so that he knew he’d really done the right thing. Good dog! Good pee! Yes! Yes! YES! GOOD BOY! (full cheerleader mode)
I suspect that, just as if he were a puppy, you might have to spend a few days keeping the dog close by so you know the minute he needs to go (many puppy owners put him on a leash at all times in the house, so they don’t miss a single opportunity). Good luck!
My dog, 14 years old, has always been an outdoors dog. However, she does end up in the house occasionally. She’s paper-trained but we realized years ago that she will pee on the living room rug if we put the paper in the kitchen. She’s gotten it into her head that if she steps foot in the kitchen, she’s going back outside (probably because the back steps are easier for her so we do bring her in and out that way) so she’ll pee where she’s not supposed to to avoid the kitchen. Once we started putting the papers near the door in the living room(where it’s tiled), we stopped finding wet spots in the morning. If you aren’t getting results you might want to make slight changes too, and put the paper where the dog gravitates to, even if it means spreading a small plastic garbage bag under the paper to keep from having leaks.
My dog is five years old. We made the mistake of paper-training him when he was a puppy, and never changed it to him going outside. Too much work, and we’re lazy. Also, it didn’t seem fair to train him to do one thing and then get mad at him for it later. But-
We just bought a house. I didn’t want him messing up the floor (wet newspaper leaves a lot of newsprint on vinyl flooring.) I didn’t want to change the stinking newspapers any more (at least my son didn’t want to!). I wanted a “normal” dog that goes outside to do his thing. So-
We all agreed to watch him like a hawk. We all take him outside often. We all praise him to the hilt when he pees or poops outside. We put his nose in it and said “no!” the 3 times he peed on the carpet. (That was weird - he didn’t go on the tile, he went on the carpet. He knew better than to go on the carpet…)
It’s almost two months and we only had 3 accidents early on. He now gives you “the look” to go outside. And we always reward him by letting him go outside. But sometimes it’s just to bark at the neighbor’s dogs, or chase cats out of the yard. That’s OK. Better than poop on my new carpets!
Sorry this is so long. The bottom line - you CAN teach an old dog new tricks! Just be committed to the task. The dog wants to please you…