Potty training adult dog? Why that carpet?

July 28, 2009 3:47 PM

Potty training an Adult Dog. We got our 2-year-old Poodle 6 months ago. She's pretty timid and nervous. We don't know anything about her background other than that she was raised with 9 other dogs. When we first got her, she was pooping and peeing in the house. We hired a trainer and followed his suggestions and now she no longer poops in the house. But she continues to pee on one particular carpet...

Here's the routine I've tried to establish with her:

(a) She sleeps in a crate and I take her out to the backyard as soon as I get up. She usually goes outside with no problem. I give her a treat as soon as she finishes.

(b) She either goes to work with me or goes to doggy daycare. At work she's tied to my desk and doesn't have accidents as long as she's confined. After much experimenting, I've found that 3 o'clock is the sweet spot where she'll always need to go. I take her outside at 3 and I give her a treat as soon as she finishes.

(c) I get home at 6 or 7 and if I'm lucky, she'll go outside right when I get home. Again, if she goes, I'll give her a treat when she finishes.

(d) This is where I start to have problems...last night, for example, we went outside at 6:30 and she peed. I took her with me to dinner and when we got home she had an accident on the carpet at about 8 p.m.We have a doggy door so she has access to the outside at all times. On occasion, she's come back in the house from the backyard to have an accident. Generally, all her accidents are on the same carpet. She seems to know that she's not supposed to pee on the carpet because she never does it when I or my husband are in the room. I never yell or punish her when she has an accident; I just clean it up.

(e) I've been trying to take her out last thing before bed (10 or 11) and once before then at 9 or 9:30. Sometimes she'll go and sometimes she won't.

I try to keep her on the same schedule on weekends, but she often has accidents during the day or at night on weekends.

I've spoken with my trainer and he says she probably wasn't housebroken before she came to live with us and learned bad habits. He didn't really seem to have any othe suggestions. I've been using nature's miracle to clean up after the accidents so the smell won't linger.

Any suggestions? I've been thinking about putting her on a water schedule (so she gets the same amount of water but at scheduled intervals). I'm not going to use negative reinforcement like rubbing her nose in it because I don't think that works.

Thanks for your help.

posted by bananafish to pets & animals (3 comments total)

I'm glad you're not going the rubbing-her-nose-in-it route. Dogs just don't get the connection (you have to catch them in the act to have any effect), and some people don't understand that.

Is it feasible to restrict her access to that particular carpet? My suspicion is that the stuff you're using to clean it up isn't completely nuking the smell, and as a result, it smells like a great place to pee. If she does pee outside sometimes and doesn't have access to her favorite indoor pee place, then maybe she'll figure out that outside is the place to go.
posted by stufflebean at 3:54 PM on July 28

does she know how to use the doggie door? if not, that's something you will have to train her to do, so that she knows she has to go in and out of it to go to the bathroom outside.

also, dittoing stufflebean. are you using cleaner that specifically is made to neutralize dog pee odor so that she doesn't keep finding the scent and associate it with where she has peed already and therefore should pee there again?
posted by violetk at 4:01 PM on July 28

Is it one very specific spot? Can you overturn a laundry basket or something over it to try to restrict her access to that area? Nature's Miracle needs about 14 days to really neutralize all the scent, and you'll need to reapply several times during that period, without fresh pee. I would probably rent a Rug Doctor and clean that spot, going out as far around it as you can in case anything has traveled through the carpet pad, and then give it a big dose of NM to start over with a ventilated cover and repeat applications.

I had this problem with one of our dogs, who was probably originally only "housetrained" with violence and eventually just sticking her outside all the time (and then moving away and leaving her there), and it was about 18 months with us before she reached the no-peeing-inside stage. I think it was helped by a move to a house with primarily tile floors, so I could really really get it clean when she did it. But there was a time when she'd do it even when the door was open, and the ramping-down process, where she did it inside less and less, took about 8 months. For part of that time, we were walking her at least twice a day because that was the only way to get her to empty her bladder, she was a stop-and-go type who needed a dozen stops to get it all out. Eventually she started taking longer pees in the yard and didn't require the walks as much.

Some nights, at bedtime, I stood outside for half an hour before she went; I very nearly had to go in the yard myself a couple of times, she kept me out so long (and now I wonder, would that have helped??), but I knew it was the only way to have one less accident and one more correct outside elimination. You really have to stick with her like glue, even with a dog door, to help her understand about always going outside, and you may need to forego the dog door for now and specifically take her out, on a leash, and not let her off it until she goes. Later, when she starts to understand about going out every time, you can use the door again. For a while you may need to force her to be in the same room with you at all times inside so she can't sneak away to her spot and go.

Do you have any other dogs? I don't know if we would have gotten Sophie completely trained if she hadn't had the other dogs to imitate. If you don't have another dog, can you have one visit for a weekend? Or just come pee in your yard every couple of days? I tried the hormone sprays, those were useless, but she was very interested in going where the other dogs had gone.
posted by Lyn Never at 4:27 PM on July 28 [1 favorite]