Hi everyone, Our lab-springer cross bitch is almost one now and doing great. She toilet-trained quickly at 11-12 weeks old and we have never had any issues with that since (except once when she was ill). Until about a month ago she always slept in her crate with the door close. As she is pretty settled in the house now and has never chewed anything (lucky us!) I thought we would try and move her out of the crate and in to a bed at night. We started this process by leaving her crate door open at night so she could still sleep in it if she wanted to, rather than in her bed which is in the kitchen too. Each morning I found her in her bed, so figured she was pretty happy sleeping outside of her crate. However, twice in the last two weeks I have come down to find that she has poo'd on the kitchen floor in the night. The first time she had an upset tummy so I figured she wasn't able to control herself well, but I hadn't heard her whine to be let out. This morning I found another, and she is not ill this time. Again, I heard no barking or whining to be let out in the night. I did let her out in the garden at 10.30pm before bed time. Should we take a step back and get her back in the crate for a while longer? Or is there another possible cause? Any suggestions gratefully received!
Perhaps you simply didn't hear her? If there is some kind of issue going on then I feel it would be cruel to force her to hold on by confining to her crate. Either she will try to hold on and be very uncomfortable, or she won't and then she'll be stuck in her own poop. TWo little accidents, I'd clean the spot with enzyme cleaner, maybe put her food or water dish in the spot for a while, give her another chance. Then maybe Vet, though it's not unusual to have a couple of mistakes even after seemingly well trained.
At our home, we have a dog door so they can go out if they need to. They normally sleep in the bedroom with us, but don't have to. At our cabin we can't have dog door (no fence) so we have the dogs sleep in the bedroom with us, and normally close the door. If they need to go out in the night we will hear about it.
