adopted dog training. help needed!

gigawatt

hi i have an adopted dog here who is a couple of years old and has several issues;

house training; despite frequent trips on lead in and out to the garden all day she is holding her pee. she will go in the garden first thing in the morning when she is let out from her crate. but she will then hold it all day long until the evening time. then she will wait for a moment when no-one is looking and pee massively in the house. its very frustrating! she is praised lavishly when she does go in the garden but doesn't seem to be making the connection.

crate training; she hates being crated. refuses to enter it despite treats and coaxing and her familiar bedding being in there. i believe she may have been kept in a crate before as a punishment or for overly long periods of time. i want to overcome this aversion but how? I've put plenty of tasty treats in there and left it open all day long with no interference from me when she sniffs at it or looks inside. when she steps inside i praise her.

recall; she will approach if she is called but stays out of arms reach.

fear of lead; she trembles with fear when she sees the lead and shies away when an attempt is made to put it on her. she is improving with this, i think she is making the association between lead= fun outside time

I have crated her at night because i do not want to wake up to a house full of urine and faeces. i am calling her over randomly, rubbing her, and then leaving her alone

she is generally a very mistrusting dog who jumps away from any sudden movement or noise. this is due to however her previous owners have handled her. to my knowledge she was not abused. however, i am trying to train her to do some basic stuff (be clean in the house, go to her own bed, go happily on a lead) but it also seems like I'm trying to undo the damage caused by her previous handling. I usually find it easy enough to train dogs to do these things, but I am finding her particularly resistant and stubborn.

is there anyone here who can give me some solid ideas on how to get her to pee/poo outside and to get her to go happily into her crate??

andreac

How long have you got her now?

gigawatt

Hi, sorry andrea, I should have said, I've only had her for just under a week, i know that that seems like a short time, its just that I'll usually make much better progress with them within the first few days, shes unusually stubborn and I'm pretty getting fed up mopping up pee! I was wondering if there are any different approaches I can use.

meoklmrk91

I am currently fostering a dog who also hated the crate. I bought a pack of dentastix, I have never met a dog who doesn't go crazy for them, even if I don't particularly like the ingredients. These are special treats that are kept for bed time only, at first I coaxed him into the crate, now when I open the door he walks in, sits and waits for his dentastick. I would try using a special, extra yummy treat for bedtime, maybe even a kong, they don't take too long to start associating the crate with their favourite treat.

DamagedTrax

1 week for a rescued dog is very little time. it took me months to get mine to sit. she took to house training quickly enough but other stuff took much longer.

keep in mind they need to unlearn everything that they previously knew as well as learning what is now expected of them.

DBB

gigawatt wrote: »

Hi, sorry andrea, I should have said, I've only had her for just under a week, i know that that seems like a short time, its just that I'll usually make much better progress with them within the first few days, shes unusually stubborn and I'm pretty getting fed up mopping up pee! I was wondering if there are any different approaches I can use.

OOooh.. you really need to lower your expectations with this one! Nervousness/fear is an exceptionally powerful emotion, and it's very hard to convince a nervous dog (or human) not to be nervous any more. It takes time and a lot of patience to allow a nervous dog to eventually realise that the world is not out to get them. Nervous dogs internalise EVERYTHING.. every noise, every unusual thing, every new situation, is internalised by them as if it's aimed personally at them, and it takes time for them to realise that it's not.. sometimes it takes a lot of time. Months. Maybe even years.

Stubborn is not, I think, an accurate description of your new dog's behaviour. She's worried, and worred dogs will refuse to do things not out of stubborness but out of fear and uncertainty. There's a very big difference between the two, and it is important to understand this so that you can change your own expectations of what you can expect from this dog, and how soon you can expect it.

Were I you, there are several things I'd do. First, ditch the crate and invest in a wire-mesh puppy playpen. They do the same job but don't have the same claustrophobic feeling as a crate. Because they're as spacious as you want them to be, they're more appropriate for keeping the dog in for longer periods so that you can control when she goes out to pee in the evenings when she's holding on to a full bladder.

Secondly, if you haven't already, I'd be inclined to get her checked with the vet to make sure there's nothing underlying which is making it painful for her to pee, thus making her avoid peeing until she absolutely has to.

Thirdly, I'd buy an ADAPTIL Diffuser (previously known as DAP) and keep it permanently plugged in near her resting area. I'd also buy some Kalm-Aid to add to her food.

Will she toilet out on walks? Perhaps she'll overmark other dogs' poops and pees outside on walks? I'd bring her out for walks on a long-line to an open area and just hang around there without doing anything much, and give her time to release her bladder and/or bowel. This will start the process of her learning that it's okay to pee near humans, and indeed that peeing near humans feels nice (peeing is a self-reinforcing activity for us all!) It's possible that she is worried about peeing in the presence of humans because she has been punished for doing so before. Most of all, don't give out to her if she has accidents: the anxiety will increase the peeing!

As for recall, it's not a good idea to let a new dog off-lead until you know them well, and they know you well. It's asking for a disaster actually, so I'd strongly advise keeping her on a long-line at all times until she is predictably returning every time you call her, working on her recall command in the meantime at home, in the garden, and eventually outside on walks.

Good luck with this one: stop expecting anything much of her for now, she's simply not in a position to deliver! Like Damagedtrax, I rescued a little nervous one about ten years ago, and it took months and months, with tiny steps forward and occasional large steps back until she came right. There were times when I wondered what the hell I'd got myself into, times that I just wanted to give her back (oooh...the guilt of saying that:o), but after a while, I suddenly realised that without me even realising it, she had come right. She's still here, as mad as a brush, but I learned an awful lot from her in those early days
Good luck, stay patient!

Vince32

You can try something that worked for me, perhaps not in any book but none the less it may be worth trying.

Next time she pee's in the house, give her a little reassurance, a pat on the head or a kiss, and put down some newspaper and clean it up. Then leave some dry paper in the place where she went, and let her do it again the next day, again a little pat or a kiss. Do this daily, but each day move the papers a little closer to the garden door, maybe over a week or so, until the papers are at the doorway, all the time praising the dog using the papers regardless if it's indoors or not, then when you feel comfortable, let the dog see you put the papers outside and close the door.

What happened with my little one was, when she needed to go, she would get up and go looking for the papers, and when she found the door was closed she would paw at the door or give a little bark to get outside.

This took me a little longer with my sibe than it did with my JRT, but the result was the same after two weeks of cleaning up pee inside the house, they both learned to go outside.

I can't make any guarantees, but I'm 2 for 2 now and no complaints.

Vince