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10PM ET Small Dog Chat - Long Term Illness Support
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10PM ET Small Dog Chat - Long Term Illness Support
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Posted by Lynn on October 16, 2002 at 12:43:39:
In Reply to: House training posted by princessxlh on October 15, 2002 at 09:23:52:
The thing with housetraining is to take it from the dog's point of view. I'm sure you've heard a million times that the reason to crate a dog is to give him a den, yada, yada and that a dog won't soil his den. Okay. Now is the trick. That is to get through his little doggy brain that the rest of the house is his den. Good luck. :) As he has shown that he is not ready for the run of the house, don't give it to him. He must only have as much freedom as he can handle and not one bit more. If he is okay being loose in the house when you're home, great. Some dogs never progress past this. I have a 7 year old greyhound that is an example of this. If I am not there in the house or physically holding onto his leash in a strange place, he WILL pee. (as an aside, he did this once INTO an electrical outlet at the vet's office. VERY EMBARRASSING!) In most cases, this is not the permanent situation.
If he is unreliable when you are with him, keep him on a leash with you in the house. The easiest way to housetrain a dog and keep your sanity is to not give the pup a chance to mess up. That's what the leash does. If he is pretty reliable when in the house with you, make sure he's gone for a looooonnnnngggg walk before you let him loose in one part of the house and go to another part to do whatever you're going to do. As I have learned too many times from trying to rush new dogs through pottying, one mark on a tree often doesn't cut it. Again, going back to my greyhound, he is a bladder on stilts and it often takes 5 or 6 "marks" before he's semi-empty. Again, he is an extreme case. If you pup hasn't been to a vet recently and the housetraining situation has come up fairly suddenly, get him looked over to make sure there isn't something the matter medically. There probably isn't but it doesn't hurt to check and a urinalysis is fairly inexpensive.
Another "trick" I use that plays on the dogs insticnt not to soil where it lives (repeating theme, sorry) is to divide it's food up onto paper plates and place them over spots that he has marked. You do this after you've cleaned them up well, of course. You house may look a little goofy for a while with a bunch of little kibble-islands, but it will work. I use white paper plates because then I can see immediately if the dog ate the food and them marked over the old spot. Doesn't happen often, but I've had a few hard-headed ones.
One last thing, if this is your first dog, or you anticipate getting another one, start a piggy bank labelled "carpet removal". Just get rid of the carpet in the main areas where the dog(s) will be. Peel and stick tile, vinyl, or ceramic tiles are WONDERFUL. My completely trashed carpet is finally coming out and being replaced with tile over Thanksgiving. My dogs are already getting used to their nice soft area rugs that go easily into the washing machine.
Oops... this really is the last thing. There are things made for boy dogs called "belly bands" these help with training for some dogs or just as a way to keep things neat for ones such as my greyhound. It's just a band that goes around the belly and you stick a maxi pad in it to catch any marking accidents. Some dogs find the sensation of the urine so close to them enough to stop marking. Others just don't get it. You very, very likely won't have this problem, but these are just a few of the things that have worked for me.
Lynn, Moe, Joplin (AKA Squirt) Madonn