Hi all! Sam arrived home on Friday evening and today feels like the first day that I can stop and breathe! He is so much fun and a bundle of energy. We have decided to crate train him, and also to observe him closely (I'm at home all day and the OH is home in the evening), so that he can learn about going outside. However, what I have found is that: 1) He isn't that keen about going outside, I have been taking him into the concrete yard as our garden is shared and I'm concerned about diseases etc (he has only had his first jabs). Would he be more keen to go on grass, and is it safe? 2) We are feeding him at 6.30am, 10.30am, 2.30pm and 6.30pm - so that he can keep to some regularity. However what I have been finding is that he will poo around 7pm, but wont want to go again till around 6.30am the next day. I was up at 2am, 4am and 6am this morning trying to convince him to go? Any ideas? Fortunately for us he loves his crate and only cried the first night, hes been fine since! I will try to post a picture as soon as I can work out how!
Hi JP and welcome to the forum. My Lilly doesn't pee easily on grass, but Boogie's guide dog puppy Always pees and poos on Concrete because she has been trained to do so. There are loads on members who are much better at training than me, but my thoughts are about establishing rewards. If you go out and he pees in the right place then give him a huge reward. Maybe 3 or 4 bits of treat in a stream. And connect the peeing with a cue. Soon as he starts the pee use a key word. Go wee wee. Or Hurry up. Or something you fancy that you are happy to say. After a while he will connect the peeing in a certain place with the cue and a great reward. As far as the risk of disease goes it depends on who may have used that space. Also where you live. Your vet should be able to advise on this. Hope you enjoy the forum and put up with our new site teething problems
Do you give treats mid-stream? My pup is 12 weeks old and I simply wait for her to finish and then give her lots of love and excitement and praise...and I also take her inside where she loves to be (otherwise her default is on the back patio). But she's gotten to the point where if I leash her and wait she is realizing that she won't get to go inside until after she pees. If I haven't seen her pee, though, I don't trust to take her inside because she'll squat down too fast for me to do anything about it and get her outside before she relieves herself. So basically she came inside, took a drink from her inside bowl, stepped into the hall and peed. She has done that about three times intermittently, great So I was worried that she somehow was associating drinking her water inside with peeing since it obviously didn't go through her in 30 seconds. So then I took her inside, she would go over to the bowl and drink from it, then I would walk her right back outside to the back yard, wait a minute or two until she pees, praise her and love her up and tell her how great she did (when she fnishes), and then we go inside and hang out and play or proceed to go on our walk into the front yard and over to a private park in our culdsac where we fetch and walk for an hour while waiting for her to poo. Do you think she is going to associate the praise I'm giving her after she's done with doing it outside as long as I'm watching her and start it as she's finishing? Might be a weird question it's just that I don't want to disturb her while she's going but if I should be popping treats down for her while she's going I'll do that, too because as soon as she shows me she can control her urine and alert me I'm bringing her in full time.
I wouldn't treat mid-stream because it's likely to interrupt her so she doesn't finish. Just wait till she's finished, immediately say "good girl!" in a very excited way and feed her several treats one after the other. My two (now nine months) will trot up to me now after weeing outside to get their treats
Thank you for the advice. JP, The only advice I can give you in what I've read and been practicing: I always make sure to play for a good half hour, at least, after my puppy poops. I have read that they may hold it in if they think it's going to end their walk or play session. I take her on an hour long walk and play session in my culdsac's park (I live in a gated community with ten units and we have a grassy area near the pool). I walk about 5 houses down and then we're at the grassy area. Now she's been dropping right when we get there so we get a full hour of play afterwards. So I'm either timing it perfectly or she's associated the fact that dropping early means we can start fetching and running around together instead of the what I imagine she thinks is relatively boring activity of walking around the circumference of the grass waiting. As I wrote that I realized you are probably not taking your puppy on walks like I am. I was under the impression that my pup had her shots and only this afternoon realized that the timing doesn't seem likely and that I should be acting as though she has had none to err on the side of caution. So that could be a potential cause of yours not going as often as you'd think. That said, even with a ton of exercise (we go to that park a good three hours a day at minimum and play all day in the back yard, as well) mine only goes after 6am breakfast and after 6pm dinner so your description may just be normal for your puppy.
Hi and welcome to the forum I would treat as soon as he finishes and say good boy. I used to say 'go wee wee' when my girl went, then would say 'good wee wee' whilst rewarding. As for not going during the night - some dogs have good bladder control and only poo after meals. At 3/4 months old Harley would sleep 11pm-7am without waking to go to the toilet. An hour walk/play is a long time for such a young pup. It is suggested that for walking (on lead) is 5 mins per month of age (3 months old =15 min lead walk a day). Playing on grass etc is ok, but I do think an hour is a bit long. There are a lot of labs who suffer with their joints/hip dysplasia etc from being allowed to jump and walked too much from a young age.
Is it walking on concrete/blacktop that is the issue or just plain walking in general? I only walk her on lead down the sidewalk literally 5 houses down so that takes about 1-2 minutes, then I walk her leisurely on the grass on lead until she drops some poo which can take up to 15 minutes to get her used to the leash and smell around the new environment, then we run around a bit (the "park" is really just a 100ftx100ft or less grassy BBQ area for the neighborhood), and then I take her off leash and play some fetch with her (it's a private community with 14 homes total and completely gated with minimal vehicle traffic--people parking when they come home from work level traffic). There's a lot of lying around in the grass and belly rubbing, face licking, sky gazing type of activities. I'd estimate total time on her feet and actually exerting at less than 40 non-consecutive minutes total. I was treating it as solid bonding time rather than straight exercise so there's a lot of breaks in that hour rather than constant activity. I'm probably overestimating a little bit, too Do you think I need to scale that back some?
It's more of lead walking, on hard surfaces especially. Because the pace humans walk, even if strolling, the dog has to keep up and can't stop etc at their leisure. This is where the 5 min rule comes in. Also, if the dog gets used to long walks now, as they get older and bigger they will need longer walks/play times. So it depends on how much time you have each day to walk etc It's great that you are spending most if the time bonding, rubbing tummy etc . That is definately needed at their age.
Hi! I am a newbie to the forum, and, excuse me if this has been addressed and I just haven't found it yet, but my 5 month old male lab has been peeing in the house again after not one accident in two months! He rings bells at the door each time, and has been consistant for quite some time. Twice in the last 3 days he has just gotten up to follow someone from one room to another and stops to squat and urinate! I was told by his littermate's owner that he is going thru the rebellious stage and pushing boundries. Has anyone dealt with this issue with a young pup who was thought to be housebroken but reverted back months later? I am hoping it is not a medical issue, but him just trying to get away with being lazy and not ringing the bell. I did notice lately that he has 'selective hearing when called back when he isn't quite ready to do so', so the assumption that he is teasting boundries does make sense. Thoughts?
Welcome to the forum House training needs to be continued, not just in the first few weeks. Even at 21 months, every time Harley goes in the garden she gets praise. It's about reinforcing the behaviour. I would go back to taking him out on a regular basis and rewarding him ever time he has a wee. Pups do forget things of they aren't reinforced. What is your pups name? Tell us a bit about him
Hi all! Sorry I haven't replied sooner. It has been a manic week of house training and having fun! Sam is now 9 weeks old and getting bigger by the day. Can anyone advise on how to get a photo uploaded? He seems more comfortable with going outside now which is great, although this has inadvertently brought us onto a new problem. I have been following Pippa's crate training guide quite closely, with only leaving for a minute, then longer and longer etc, this is being rewarded for when appropriate. However yesterday the OH and I were making breakfast in the kitchen with Sam crated, he began crying and crying as he sometimes does, when we came back we found, what can only be described as, a poo explosion all over the crate and pup! I would like to add that he had been taken for a bathroom break very recently. I washed him up and OH cleaned the crate. Following this later on in the afternoon he was being crated again (briefly) and he began round two of the poo explosion, although this time we got him outside. My question is: could this have just been an upset tummy or a new form of doggy protest? It is making me nervous about leaving him for longer this week (no more than 10 - 15mins). Sorry about the long post!
