Hi, my pup is nearly 18 weeks now and is crate trained. He has been brilliant with his training right from the beginning and was able to hold his poo and wee for a good few hours. He could go into his crate from 10pm and I'd get him out at 6am and he would be fine no accidents at all. But since Monday he has had three accidents in his crate (having a poo). He doesn't make any noise as far as I can tell as it would definitely wake me up! The only difference has been that he has a carrot at around 4pm, he has been for over a week now with no issues til now, but could this be making him want to toilet more? We have moved his food to 5 instead of 5.30 so he does have plenty of time to digest his food, and he is taken outside before bed but doesn't do anything else but wee.
My guess would be that it could actually have something to do with the carrot. So the first thing I would do is move the carrot to an earlier time of day, or cut it out for a while and see what happens. Also moving the food earlier in my opinion is also good. We actually have always fed our last meal to all of our dogs at 4:30 pm just for that reason we like to go to bed pretty early and read and are early risers so the last time the pup goes out is usually about 8:30 pm. Anyway....my answer is also contingent on the fact that im guessing the poops are normal? not runny or anything because that could be a whole different story. I've had a Lab as old at 2 have an accident in a crate and not wake me up when he was feeling poorly!
Carrots tend not to be able to be digested by dogs, so often come out in chunks the way they went in... So it may be adding too much extra fibre to his diet and I'd cut it out as a first step. Next, you need to identify exactly when in the night this is happening, so you can set your alarm clock, wake up and go take him out before it has occurred. You need to do this for several nights in a row to try to break the habit. You can either just guess a time in the middle of the night and go for that to start with, or set a camera on the crate and watch when it is happening. Next, you could crate him by your bed because this way you will definitely hear him wake up and get restless around the right time. You need to do whatever is necessary to get there before he toilets and to break the habit.
