I started my dog on puppy pads (bad, bad move on my part) and weened her off them the past 6 months. I had to have her use them because I would be gone some days for 12 hours when she was a young pup. She started her new outdoor potty training fine and would do #1 and #2 outside but lately, she has been using the outside for #1 and the carpet for #2… She’s a year old.
I did everything exactly the same for teaching her #1 and #2 need to be done outside and inside is bad… However, this hasn’t set in with her.
It isnt just a couple incidences either. This has been going on for almost a month.
What can I do to get her back on track and able to realize that both are the same and need to be done outside???
In the first year, I don’t think I trained her to go out so much as she trained me to let her out often enough. The crate helped. Even with me coming home for lunch, she’d be in the crate four hours at a time. It made the trips outside when I came home much more likely to be productive. She still won’t ask to go out, she just has more capacity to wait.
I had issues housebreaking a dog that I took in that was stray- hell, he thought #1 and #2 were meant to be done inside. It took a lot of repetition of bringing him outside and praising him when he went outside. Walking the dog may help, as she may smell where other dogs have gone and go there as well. If she goes in the house and you don’t catch her, remove the solid waste and put it outside near where you want her to go so that the scent is there. If you catch her, stop her and get her outside, praise her when she goes, lather, rinse repeat. Make sure that the house is very clean so that there is no trace of pee/poo smell inside the house.
It may take time and be frustrating, but she’ll get it. With mine, I kept him literally leashed to me 24/7 for about 4 days so that there was ZERO ability for him to sneak off and poo somewhere in the house. We went absolutely everywhere together, tethered. It was impossible for him to fail using this method (he was crated at bedtime and did not go in the crate). That sounds extreme but the important thing was that I was able to praise his proper elimination day after day several days in a row and he knew exactly what the deal was.
Make sure you clean up the old poop really well. Dogs set up “scent posts” and they’ll keep going in the same place if you don’t get rid of the smell. Use a disinfectant first, then wet down with a solution of 25% white vinegar, 75% hot water. Don’t worry, the vinegar smell will vanish when it dries, and it won’t hurt your carpeting.
Don’t let the dog see you clean it up. More dominant dogs will start to think of you as a maid/housekeeper. Why should they go outside when they know you’ll clean it up inside? Put the dog in a separate room while you clean it, then put an overturned chair (or something similar) over the cleaned area to keep the dog away while it dries.
Don’t respond when you come home to find the mess. If you are away for a long time, the dog may use pooping inside as an attention-getting maneuver. Don’t give in to this. Greet the dog normally, put him in a separate room, clean up the mess, then go about business as usual.
Potentially, start keeping the dog in the crate again. Dogs don’t mess where they sleep. Until the dog is retrained to poop outside, don’t give the dog free run of the house while you are gone. Once you’ve gotten the dog used to pooping only outside for say, a month, start giving the dog LIMITED access to the rest of your house/apartment while you are gone.
A dog between 6 and 12 months is still an adolescent. They are testing your boundaries/limits. See 2) and 3). Go back to the crate, and the problem may simply resolve with time, when the dog realizes YOU are the master.