Our dog is 6 months old. Very hyperactive and very dirty when it comes to toilet training. He picks a random spot and either pees there, poops there or both. He does this several times a day and recently, it is diahhrea and smells so revolting.
You can hardly even see the carpet in our house because there is so much newspaper on the floor to avoid stains etc. Recently, he is urinating on the walls and has made a stain on a section of the house. Not only that, he constantly eats our cats food and will go to all lengths to succeed. I am at the end of my tether and desperatley need advice!
We don’t shout at him. We just say “NO! NAUGHTY!” in a discliplinary voice when he has peed/pooped. What else is revolting is that he sometimes EATS his own crap, and even the cats!
Whenever he shows signs of wanting to do something, I take him into the garden. Most of the time, he does something outside. But just now, and earlier on today as well, we took him outside for a good 5 minutes and he did nothing. I brought him inside and he peed, straight away, on the floor. I took him back outside, he did nothing. He comes in, and poops upstairs!
I need help. I really really want to train this dog, but I am losing my insanity over this. He even peed on our brand new sofa which totally ****** me off. He’s a sweet little thing, but very dirty. I desperatley need advice, preferably from someone who has been through the same thing.
Thanks
I also forgot to mention
We have not had him from birth. We’ve had him 3 weeks. His previous owner was a druggy and kept him locked in a room where she TRAINED him to do his toiletry in the corner of the room. SO basically, I have the added challenge of plucking him from one habit and putting him into another.
When he does his business outside, we always praise him by patting him, making him feel good about himself etc. If he does bad, we don’t shout at him – we just say NO! in a harsh tone.
I would also like to ask: occasionally, he likes to bite people for no reason. I keep a squirty bottle near me and if he does this, I will say NO! and squirt air at him. Is this a viable method of making him stop biting people?
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I would respectfully suggest you read a couple of books and watch some videos on raising and training dogs. Also, I recommend two TV shows, “The Dog Whisperer” with Cesar Millan on the National Geographic Channel, and “It’s Me or the Dog,” with Victoria Stillwell, on Animal Planet. Both programs are very instructive and often deal with the issues you raise here. Good luck!
read this about crate training:
http://www.iams.com/iams/en_US/jsp/IAMS_Page.jsp?pageID=A&articleID=177&gclid=CIHJxKLD5JYCFQ4NDQodqiZ0PQ
and its not a virus -_-
Here is where I went for all my dog training needs, my friend used it and now everyone we know uses this site;
http://www.beginningdogtraining.com
Have fun!
JR
Puppies can’t hold it for more than an hour at most sometimes, taking them out more frequently and NOT coming back till the do their business is the key to training.
Get yourself some pet gates and restrict where the dog can move around the house. There’s no reason to have him doing this literally everywhere. Confine him to one room, or out of every room you can, and start looking around for local obedience classes and dog behavioral classes. He needs to be trained and at 6 months SHOULD be trained by now.
Shove his nose in it, beat his ass and yell at him and the throw him outside.
Walk him for 1-2 hours every morning before you feed him.
I mean EVERY morning
Potty training takes time.
Firstly at 6 months if he’s lifting his leg on walls, he needs to be fixed or he’s going to start territorially marking, which isn’t going to help.
Secondly ALL dogs will eat catfood. They can’t help it, it smells great to dogs and you just can’t teach them not to eat it. It must be put in a palce the cat can get to it, but the dog can’t. No other way around it. The same goes for the litterbox.. cat poop is something dogs like to eat. So again you’ll have to keep the litterbox where the dog can’t get at it. You’re fighting a losing battle if you want to train him away from those things.
Thirdly, I suggest crate training (which I’ve never done but a lot of people succeed with this), or ambilical training (which I have used and liked). Loop the leash into your belt loop, and go about your day. This not only lets you keep an eye on the dog, but shows it that it depends on YOU for its freedom, so you’re also taking on a leadership/dominant role in its life (a good thing).
Different dogs react to different balances of discipline and praise… you mention you’ve been verbally correcting for indoor potties… have you praised for outdoor potties? Are you outside with him when he goes, and do you praise DURING his potty outside? Dogs have very short memories for praise/punishment association, so if you’re not praising/correcting DURING the action, there’s no point.
When he potties in the house, do you just say “NO” then bring him outside? I suggest this similar approach: Say NO! even as you’re getting to the dog as fast as you can. Firmly but gently (no punishment), take his collar/leash, and pull him outside. Don’t wait for him to finish, if he leaves a pee/poop trail all the better. He may or may not finish outside, but the key is you really don’t want him to finish.
An interesting point is, you know how it feels good to pee…? Well if you allow your dog to potty in the house, your dog is actually being rewarded for doing it because it feels good. You want to not allow him to do it, just because he won’t be allowed the time to do it, since you’ll be hauling him outside as soon as he squats.
It’s hard I know, just keep it up. No paper training or pee pads either, that’ll just make it worse. No potty inside, ever. He’s old enough to learn.
ADD: as if this wasn’t long enough: WRT your comment about the biting, yes a waterbottle can be an effective correction tool. However labs love water… so he might just think it’s a game. Every dog is different, but yes worth a shot.
Also I think your answer is house restriction, be it in an x-pen (love those), or a crate, or leashed to you to your belt. Especially with the history of having pottying in the house encouraged. If he’s never wandering alone long enough to decide to potty indoors, he’ll slowly build a habit of going outdoors. Keep it up, you’re on the right track.
Okay – you need to go back to step one in housebreaking. NEVER leave the dog unattended. He is either in a crate, tethered to you with a leash, or interacting with you. No other options.
And yes, you need a crate – and one that is small enough that he won’t eliminate in one area, and sleep/rest in another. As soon as you see him START to squat, make a loud noise (I clapped my hands and said Ack! – not yelling, just loud), and take him outside immediately. Give him a “potty” command – and ignore him until he pees/poops. And it takes more than 5 minutes – I remember a 30 minute session once! Once he goes, it’s party time – lots of praise, pats, etc.
Every two hours or so, or after he comes out of his crate after a long period, take him outside as well.
At his age, you should know when he needs to poop. Most dogs take time to find the perfect poop spot – or try taking him for a walk at those times.
All it takes is consistency, and not allowing the dog any other option but to only eliminate outside!
Well, you need to go to square one of potty training. Get an X pen (or crate) and put it in your kitchen. Add toys and blankets. This will become a fun area for him to be. Whenever you are not able to CONSTANTLY watch him, he has to be put inside the pen. Set the timer, and take him out *no* more than two hour intervals. From the beginning I would probably say every hour.
Now, when you take him outside to go, give him time! Five minutes is not necessarily long enough. And, after he is done, let him sniff around and play for a while, or else he will just hold it longer so he can spend more time outside.
Take him on three walks a day, and make sure he goes to the bathroom during each one. Please clean up after yourself.
When he gets that he isn’t supposed to *go* in his crate/pen, then you can increase the amount of the house he has access to. Block of, say the kitchen. Now he has to learn that going to the bathroom in the kitchen is unacceptable. Again, when you cannot watch him, put him in his crate.
Gradually increase the amount of house the dog can use. If he goes somewhere, take a step back.
You also need to buy a deodorizer and a sanitizer. Dogs will be more tempted to urinate in a spot that smells.
Properly house-training a 6-month-old puppy is going to be much more difficult than training a younger one. Most importantly, you need to start right away with crate training, rather than allowing the dog free roam of the house at all times. The dog should be crated after any accident, and taken outside immediately after being crated. If the dog fails to go once outside, or if there are any accidents when back inside, back into the crate the dog goes. Free roam of the house should be a reward for good behavior.
As you’re seeing some success with crate training, then it is vital to get a good thorough cleaning of the carpet. As long as there are ANY lingering smells (even if you can’t smell them), then there will continue to be accidents.
Additionally, I have found that some dogs that seem difficult to potty train also just desire more time outside or more exercise. We had several similar problems with our husky, but they relieved themselves as I began to take longer walks with her. She needed about two 30-minute walks a day to ensure that she did her business properly.
I have been through the same thing and it took forever to train him AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
it was horrible but we finally figured it out we went to a pet store and found this dog accident spray what it does is it covers up the smell of the dogs yearn (male dogs pea in a,or many, specific spot(s) to mark their territory) if the dog cant find its “spot” then it stops peeing there its great ! your dog sounds very territorial this is the reason it pees ,eats the cat food and bites my advise use the squirt bottle for every thing also put water in it this does not hurt your dog it just really gets on their nerves HOPE THIS HELPS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
number one} this pup that you got is very confused he came to you at three months. Is this the reason that the other people that owned him got rid of him? your going to have to start over again on the training start from scratch. sorry i had to do the same thing wen i got my older pup shes a 1 year old pit bull. shes house trained now. but we just got a boston terrier pup shes 3 months old shes doing got with the peeing thing but! the poop thing isn’t going so well she poops out side and than comes in and does it in my house. i still haven’t figure out why .but i do think it has something to do with the sellers letting the pups on a rug and news papers and running around the house, with out supervision. and never letting the mom and pups out side at all. even the mom was going on the news papers so you cant let any paper on the flood at my home. we use to read the sundays paper and relax but we cant put any of it on the flood now.im starting all over training this one.and let me tell you crate is the best thing to use. with dogs thank god my first pups dog trainer told me about them there wonderful. as far as the chewing its still teething,yak and say no wen he does that, and give him a raw hide. that’s what i do. good -luck