Puppy training issue

ITgirl73

I adopted a 6 month old puppy. No history of abuse. But he refuses to urinate or poo outside. He is doing it on my rug. I take him out regularly and he just lies there or walks around. If I catch him circling I take him out. I spent hour outside with him tonight and then he came in & did both jobs I clean where he does it and sprayed & he chose different spot but will not go outside

I repeated his vaccines so he cannot go out walking for another month

What can I do to break this habit. This is my 3rd dog and I never had this issue before

My previous dog died recently- is it possible he can scent her and if so what can I do?

cocker5

What process are u using to toilet train him?

Ie treats , praise, using a key word etc. when he goes outside?

ITgirl73

cocker5 wrote: »

What process are u using to toilet train him?

Ie treats , praise, using a key word etc. when he goes outside?

Trying “go potty”, then “do jobs” when I got. O reaction to that . He makes zero attempts to perform outside. He just holds. It until he comes in.

NSAman

The old stick his nose in it and immediately put him outside has worked on every pup I have ever had.

IT takes time, usually a couple of weeks to train a pup

cocker5

NSAman wrote: »

The old stick his nose in it and immediately put him outside has worked on every pup I have ever had.

IT takes time, usually a couple of weeks to train a pup

Please do not do this .. it’s prehistoric and unnecessary

OP you need to go back to basics .. start from scratch.

How often are you taking him out? They should go out after the eat, play, sleep etc

You need him to stay outside until he goes .. then praise him.

Im not sure using two words and two phrases will work - pick one word be consistent

Have u considered crate training ?

NSAman

cocker5 wrote: »

Please do not do this .. it’s prehistoric and unnecessary

OP you need to go back to basics .. start from scratch.

How often are you taking him out? They should go out after the eat, play, sleep etc

You need him to stay outside until he goes .. then praise him.

Im not sure using two words and two phrases will work - pick one word be consistent

Have u considered crate training ?

So it does work despite being in your words, prehistoric and unnecessary.

I find crate training to be offensive and restrictive.. again an opinion.

Praise should always be given when correct behaviour is done. Always follow the same reward for good behaviour routine OP. It reinforces the good behaviour and makes the puppy understand what is required of him. Try to make “peepee”or “ potty” the training word and huge praise once recognition of same is done. Make it fun for the pup.

Best of luck.

Rechuchote

If a puppy pees on the rug it's because he smells his pee on it, and thinks it's the correct place.

Wash the rug with hot water and biological detergent, and repeat this every time he pees there. The biological detergent removes the pee smell, invisible to a human nose but loud to a dog's or cat's nose.

You're right to take him out regularly; when he pees outside, praise him and pet him extravagantly and use a keyword - it doesn't have to be something with human meaning; it can be an unusual word that you won't be embarrassed to say in front of others like "Stravinsky" or "Ontological" or something.

This'll come right. He's only a baby yet, and for a pup who's lived outside it takes a while to learn.

Sticking a pup's nose in pee or poo is only likely to make him hide and pee somewhere else. Also, what???

DBB

There is absolutely no point in asking a dog to do anything if he has never learned how to respond to the request. They don't speak English, they don't understand English, so you can ask a pup to "go potty" til you're blue in the face... To him, right now, those words are a meaningless noise.
He has to learn the action before learning the verbal cue, and with all due respect, using just praise to reward a novice dog for carrying out a relatively complex process would be akin to my boss paying me buttons for my day's work, which would not motivate me to even try. You need to go big with motivators... For pups, that's almost always food. The tastier the better, to start with.
With a novice dog, you simply have to make toileting outside the most fantastic experience for him, for weeks to come. This gives him a choice... Either go inside and get nothing, or go outside and get yummy pieces of chicken/ham/cheese... He's got to learn that going outside will result in him winning the jackpot. Motivation is so important in training, and praise alone just cones nowhere near enough with most novice dogs.
It's going to be a little harder for you op, because at some point he has become "reverse housetrained", which means he has learned to go in the house. Getting to go to the toilet is inherently rewarding in itself, the feeling of relief when he eliminates is reinforcing his going inside... Another reason why delicious food treats need to be used to up the ante in making eliminating outside more rewarding for him.
As he is targeting your rug, it means he is, to his credit, seeking out a soft surface to go on, which is at the hub of housetraining. What surfaces have you in your garden?
It's possible he has already been somewhat trained to newspaper or puppy pads... I'd try these as an opening gambit to see if he'll go on them, and I'd lift that rug for the next few weeks. If you discover that he'll go on newspaper or pads, I would then move the paper or pads outside, and start from there to teach him to go on pads outside (yummy treats, major praise, more yummy treats, go back inside), then gradually reduce the size of the pads by cutting them, until he's eliminating on grass alone.
If the worst comes to the worst, you could buy a very cheap rug for outside, let him go on it, and gradually cut it down to a smaller and smaller size until it's gone. In any case, once you are reasonably confident that he's going to eliminate for you outside, then you start to attach the verbal cue, just before he lowers himself into the squat. Only now can he stand a chance at realising, with repetition, that if you say "go potty", and he performs, then the world is filled with yummy treats, huge praise, more yummy treats, and getting to go back inside. On that note... Do not praise or treat until after he has started to lift out of the squat... He must learn that finishing eliminating is the reason for the treats/praise/more treats/back inside.

As for using punitive techniques to achieve housetraining... It's risky. I've met too many dogs who won't toilet in front of their owners, or they go away and hide behind furniture to eliminate, because they associate their owner's presence around toilet-time with unpleasantness. In any case, all dogs sniff each others' butts, and so many dogs eat their own and others' poops, that I'd somewhat question how punitive rubbing their noses in their excrement is... The manhandling to achieve said excrement-rubbing has the potential to make the pup fear the owner's presence after toileting... Which will make housetraining nigh-on impossible.
Dog behaviour experts are of the opinion that many dogs will eventually housetrain anyway, regardless of whether they're punished for doing it inside, which gives their owner the illusion that rubbing their nose in it works. Obviously op it's your choice what to do and what technique to use, but when it comes to housetraining in particular, I'd be very careful about punishment. With positive reinforcement, you can't do any damage.
Lastly, be patient! Remember, he's only new... he doesn't know you, he doesn't know your home... He's had at least some chaos in his young life to date, so do cut him some slack, and give him time to get this right!

ITgirl73

I have spent the last hour outside with him. He has not eliminated himself at all outside since I got him. Breeder told me that he was going outside. He is holding it now since last night as I have closed the doors so he does not have access to rug. Even if he did it once so that I can praise him but he doesn’t. I have cleaned the rug now and leaving it to dry. He keeps trying to access room where rug is. Even if I pick him up as he starts circling or even starts the process he seems to stop when I take him outside.

Another thing he doesn’t bark. Not a sound. I was not overly concerned as I remember other dogs took a few days before they barked but he is 6 months old surely there should be some sort of noise from him. He heard a neighbours dog barking last night and he gave a little cry and asked to be picked up. I am just worried that there might be something wrong with him even though vets passed him

When he makes his poo he also eats it even though he is eating well. He was on cheap dog food so I am introducing a better quality one gradually in case he is missing out on nutrients hence the dog poo eating

Rechuchote

My pup didn't bark at six months, but at seven-and-a-half months acquired a deep, loud, scary bark that he deploys at all dangers - the cat next door, horses going past on the road, people at the door, etc. He's good about stopping when he's told, though.

Your pup, ITgirl73, has obviously acquired the notion that the correct place to pee is where that rug was. It would be a good idea to wash the floor under it with biological detergent as well.

I think what I'd be inclined to do at this stage would be

a) put the pup on his lead
b) open the door of the pee room
c) let him lead you in and crouch and start to pee
d) call "no! no! outside" and rush him outside while he's peeing
e) (hopefully) praise him extravagantly for the little bit of pee he does when outside
f) clean up the pee he's done inside with biological detergent
g) tell him how clever he is to pee outside, with lots of praise and petting.

If the rug is a possible sacrifice, you might also simply move it outside so he can pee on it outside…?

As for eating his poo, put some chopped pineapple in his food for a few days; for some mysterious reason this has stopped poo-eating in my pups. You may need to repeat this a couple of times. (My own theory is that pineapple provides some mineral that puppies get from poo; I've read that it makes their poo taste nasty, but strangely this method also seems to gradually stop them snapping up bits of other dogs' poo on the road.)

MayoSalmon

NSAman wrote:

The old stick his nose in it and immediately put him outside has worked on every pup I have ever had.

Is this a joke?!

borderlinemeath

He can smell his wee/poo OP. Is there a chance you'd let him in to the room and put a ladle or oven tray underneath him when he's going and "collect" it - bring it outside and place it where you want him to go? Then it will smell familiar outside?

tk123

We had a mat that Lucy would go on inside when we were training her even though she was going outside on queue...it was just a cheap Ikea mat though so we just threw it out lol and problem solved. We did lift the other runners in kitchen too when she was training to be safe/minimise potential places that she might go that weren't as easy to clean (compared to the bare floor) but had left this one mat down as it's where the dogs would skid if they run out of the sitting room... we waited a few more weeks and then replaced it and all good.

Rechuchote

The thing is, this is a problem of communication. The puppy thinks the room is the correct place to go, and is getting more and more desperate when he can't get in.

OP, if you can sacrifice the rug, you could move it gradually out of the room and out the back door in, say, five steps, and he'll realise that outside is the place to go.

But you'll have to keep the floor of the room cleaned with biological detergent and keep the door shut once you have the pee rug out of there and on its way to the back door.

Tranceypoo

NSAman wrote:

The old stick his nose in it and immediately put him outside has worked on every pup I have ever had.

Oh for goodness sake NO!!! This is 2019 not 1919!!

aonb

OP, please read the advice from DBB - its spot on!
May I ask how long you have the puppy?
Is he a confident/relaxed pup?
What breed?

ShaShaBear

NSAman wrote: »

The old stick his nose in it and immediately put him outside has worked on every pup I have ever had.

IT takes time, usually a couple of weeks to train a pup

This is how you end up with a dog who eats his own feces and laps his own urine off the floor in a bit to prevent anyone seeing it.
When we adopted our dog, it took us almost a solid YEAR to convince the poor pet that he wasn't going to be in trouble for an accident outside.

When you're potty training a toddler, you don't shove their nose in accidents. It's disgusting, inhumane and achieves nothing except makes them afraid of eliminating where you can see - they don't magically learn where they need to go. Dogs are no different.

Your dog is going on the rug because the rug smells like the place to go. You need to wash it, and the floor underneath it properly to remove the smell (as others have suggested).

Rechuchote

ITgirl73 wrote: »

I have spent the last hour outside with him. He has not eliminated himself at all outside since I got him. Breeder told me that he was going outside. He is holding it now since last night as I have closed the doors so he does not have access to rug. Even if he did it once so that I can praise him but he doesn’t. I have cleaned the rug now and leaving it to dry. He keeps trying to access room where rug is. Even if I pick him up as he starts circling or even starts the process he seems to stop when I take him outside.

Another thing he doesn’t bark. Not a sound. I was not overly concerned as I remember other dogs took a few days before they barked but he is 6 months old surely there should be some sort of noise from him. He heard a neighbours dog barking last night and he gave a little cry and asked to be picked up. I am just worried that there might be something wrong with him even though vets passed him

When he makes his poo he also eats it even though he is eating well. He was on cheap dog food so I am introducing a better quality one gradually in case he is missing out on nutrients hence the dog poo eating

Dogs mature at different rates. My pup is just 8 months old, and he's only discovered his big loud bark in the last couple of weeks, and has only started cocking his leg to mark where he wants to pee around the same time. His sister (from the same litter) has only barked once or twice.

And try a few pineapple chunks in the food for the poo-eating. It worked well for both my former (sob) dog and my new pup.

Rather than waiting anxiously outside for your pup to go, might I suggest a walk, bringing lots of treats with you? And poo bags Treat for all kinds of things - a praised and treat-happy pup is a happy pup! And if he eliminates, lots of praise and treats. He's more likely to go when he's on a walk.

KikiLaRue

Similar-ish question guys.

My puppy is 3.5 months. I'm home most of the day and try to leave the back door open so she can go in and out as she pleases. I give her great praise when she goes outside, which is most of the time, and she almost never goes in her crate.

She knows outside is the place.

Today, the back door was open and she went, looked outside, saw the rain and came in and peed in the corner. I shouted "No, no, outside!" and then I put her outside for a few minutes.

Five minutes after I let her in, she did a poo inside.

She just does not want to go out in the rain. This time I left her outside for a solid 10 minutes even though she was scrambling to come in, partially because I need her to get used to being out in the rain (it's light rain, it's not lashing), partly because I needed to clean up and... if I'm totally honest... partially because I was pissed off with her.

Any advice on this?

Rechuchote

KikiLaRue wrote: »

Similar-ish question guys.

My puppy is 3.5 months. I'm home most of the day and try to leave the back door open so she can go in and out as she pleases. I give her great praise when she goes outside, which is most of the time, and she almost never goes in her crate.

She knows outside is the place.

Today, the back door was open and she went, looked outside, saw the rain and came in and peed in the corner. I shouted "No, no, outside!" and then I put her outside for a few minutes.

Five minutes after I let her in, she did a poo inside.

She just does not want to go out in the rain. This time I left her outside for a solid 10 minutes even though she was scrambling to come in, partially because I need her to get used to being out in the rain (it's light rain, it's not lashing), partly because I needed to clean up and... if I'm totally honest... partially because I was pissed off with her.

Any advice on this?

It's a nuisance, but she'll grow out of it. I remember several "Oh, for Chrissake!" moments in recent months, but my pup now has the traditional sure-I'm-not-made-of-sugar attitude to rain and happily dashes outside for a pee or a poo. And is fairly reliably pooing in the correct place (on a hard stand area where it's easy to pick it up and dispose of it).

em_cat

KikiLaRue wrote: »

Similar-ish question guys.

My puppy is 3.5 months. I'm home most of the day and try to leave the back door open so she can go in and out as she pleases. I give her great praise when she goes outside, which is most of the time, and she almost never goes in her crate.

She knows outside is the place.

Today, the back door was open and she went, looked outside, saw the rain and came in and peed in the corner. I shouted "No, no, outside!" and then I put her outside for a few minutes.

Five minutes after I let her in, she did a poo inside.

She just does not want to go out in the rain. This time I left her outside for a solid 10 minutes even though she was scrambling to come in, partially because I need her to get used to being out in the rain (it's light rain, it's not lashing), partly because I needed to clean up and... if I'm totally honest... partially because I was pissed off with her.

Any advice on this?

Stop leaving the door open for her to go in & out at wilk you need to set boundaries other wise she may choose to use your entire garden as a toilet.

If you want her to get use to the rain you need to walk her in it as oppose to purposely leaving her out with the door closed. Or you can go out & play with her in the rain. Do something she finds fun. She needs to learn that good things happen when it rains, not to be punished. We may not see it as punishment but to them it can be very frightening especially if they are socialised to it properly.

In terms of toileting you have to teach them where you want them to go, think of it like potty training a child, you don’t just expect they’ll learn on their own. you have to teach them.

Neither of my dogs particularly enjoy getting wet but I’ve taught them it’s ok by walking them purposely in the rain but then they both get blow dried, they both love this and get a super tasty treat for walking in the rain