I have a boxador pup, she's about 4 1/2 months old now. We've had her for a month and before then, she was an outdoor dog only. She's doing good at house training, though if she has accidents it's usually poop. She will sit at our back door when she needs to go out but I've noticed she doesn't always do this when she needs to poop. I catch her sniffing and I then say "let's go potty" and we go outside, she poops and gets praised or a treat (sometimes). However we work and my kids are at school so there is about 5 hours when she's inside with our Lab. Her accidents don't happen everyday but can be about 3-4 times a week (too many in my mind!). When we are not home, we have them gated off from the majority of the house to isolate areas in case of accidents or chewing on furniture. We always make sure she goes potty before we leave but she does poop a lot! At least 4 times a day. We feed them 2x a day and it's strictly dry food. Any helpful suggestions would be great I can try to break this poop thing! Thanks!! Boxador mom
At 16 weeks old, she simply isn't going to have enough warning between knowing she needs to go, and starting to toilet - she doesn't have enough time to be able to get herself outside. Toilet training a pup, you need to take them outdoors every time they need to go. Wait for them to go. Provide a treat immediately, outside. If you are out for 5 hours, obviously you can't do that. That is where crates come in. Puppies naturally don't want to toilet in their crate and will hold on. However, 5 hours is a long time to leave a pup crated without a break - so ideally you would be paying a pet sitter to come in after 2 hours, take the pup out to toilet, play with the pup for 30mins and leave the pup crated again. That will break up the 5 hours and ensure you don't have accidents to come home to....
Honestly, I’ve helped to house train several puppies in my lifetime, and the very best method of house training I’ve found is... take them out every 20-30 minutes. If they have an accident, don’t yell or otherwise make a big deal about it (their memory is only about 10 seconds at this point, they have no clue what you’re yelling about) just take them out, then afterward, clean up the mess thoroughly, and move on with your day. My pup was alerting that he had to go outside by the time he was 8 weeks old, went 2 weeks without an accident, then suddenly started having poop accidents. 3 days of poop accidents, at least 3 times a day. (Normal poo, no signs of illness) So, I went back a few steps, and if he hadn’t gone poo in a couple hours, but didn’t go when he was taken outside, I put him in his crate. He wasn’t allowed to wander around the house until he went poo outside. Plus I started using the clicker to teach him what I wanted him to do to alert for potty breaks. When he went to the door and sat, or pawed at the door, I clicked the clicker and opened the door. Then when he went potty I clicked again, and he got a small treat. That little clicker is my best friend now! It’s amazing what you can teach a puppy with such a simple noise. Even our 9 year old Husky has picked up on some of the things I’ve been teaching Dallas with the clicker.
My pup had 1 pee accident on the carpet at 8 weeks the first day we got her home. We used puppy pads she pooped as soon as they were down. After this she went on the pads in the night. They can't be expected to hold it in for 5 hours it's asking too much at a young age.
Have you ever had an issue with rugs or anything accidentally left on the floor being pottied on since stopping potty pads? Every dog I’ve ever met that was trained with potty pads would use rugs and things on the floor as a bathroom. They had learned that things on the floor were for their bathroom needs. Clearly, that is not the intention of potty pads, but that is the trend I’ve seen. Maybe your experience has been different?
I understand some dogs will use a mat mine never did. We have a mat by the door we used to leave the pads down incase she had an accident she would igore the pads and go to the door to go out.
