Remedial housetraining for an adult dog

Hi, my name is Sue Walton, and I love teaching others my insider tips to dog training. While you can learn the basics of what you need to know from my articles, I sincerely recommend you get hold of a copy of 'Secrets to dog training' which was formerlly known as 'SitStayFetch'. Daniel Stephens provides you with breed specific  training tips and secrets quite unlike anything else you will find.

Dear Sue

Here is my problem, I have a 3 year old beagle named Fred who will not stop spotting in the house. In the past week he has really gotten bad. Today he walked into the living room, looked at my wife and urinated on the couch. We cleaned that up and various other spots and went out, only to find more when we came back (we were gone an hour and my father in law lives with us, so there is always someone there to let him out).

We have had Fred for just over 3 yrs. He was not housebroken when we got him. The problem has been off and on since we had him. Fred would not urinate in the house for stretches of time, we thought we broke him of this habit a few times, but it has gotten worse. He urinates on chair legs, corners of furniture, anything like a bag left on the floor.

He is not neutered.

He does not defecate in the house. We have not crate trained him.

He is well fed and well loved, he is a very loving and gentle dog but he is driving us nuts, how do I correct this behaviour? How do I discipline him?

Please Help I don’t want to loose my dog!

Thank You Brad

The Solution:

House soiling issues are among the more difficult and complex behaviour problems, so I won’t be able to give you an easy and straightforward answer. I will give you my best guesses as to what is going on in your case, and how to modify Fred’s behaviour.

Why is he doing it?

I’m guessing from your description that you got Fred as a puppy or young adult. It sounds like he may never have fully learned that he is only allowed to urinate outside. That alone could be the bulk of your problem, and in that case you would need to go completely back to basics and crate train him as though he were a puppy (more on that later).

However, there are two other red flags in your description of the problem. The first is that this is an adult dog with an intermittent history of house soiling, which means his “spotting” may be a symptom of a medical problem. I know this may seem hard to believe, but in a case like yours, the first thing I would suggest is to go to the vet for a complete check-up before starting any training program.

The second is that Fred is an intact (un-neutered) male dog, who is urinating on your furniture and belongings. This sounds like a typical urine-marking scenario, especially because Fred never defecates in the house.

Marking territory is a problem most common in intact males, and in order to modify that behaviour, you would need to get Fred neutered, then go back to basics and crate train him as though he were a puppy. Neutering can also have some other significant health benefits, and I highly recommend discussing this option with your vet.

How do I solve the problem?

Unfortunately, you are going to have to completely re-housebreak Fred. It may well be more difficult than housebreaking a puppy, and will require commitment, consistency, and some fairly major lifestyle changes.

Your first steps should be

From this point on, you are going to treat Fred as though he has never been housebroken. When you are home and can keep a close eye on him, Fred should be with you at all times, on a leash tied to your waist. Do not let him loose in the house at any time.

When you are not home or cannot have him attached to you, he should be in his crate. He should sleep in his crate at night, unless he’s used to sleeping on your bed and doesn’t urinate on it, in which case you can attach him to your bed with the leash. If you need to be gone for a long time, leave him outside with appropriate shelter so that he doesn’t have to be confined in the crate.

For the first couple of weeks, try to take him outside, on leash, every 2-3 hours during the day. Whenever he goes to the bathroom outside, praise him quietly while he “does his business,” then reward him with several of those special treats you should be carrying around in your pocket the moment he finishes. Make a really big deal about rewarding him, especially in the first couple of weeks. You want to make going to the bathroom outside something he’ll go way out of his way to do.

If he does start to urinate in the house, you should correct him during the act, which will be easy it you have him on leash and are paying attention. You have several choices of how to correct him; what you choose should depend on your dog’s temperament. The correction should be severe enough to immediately stop the behaviour; if he simply startles and continues to urinate, it was not an effective correction. Your choices are:

Do not hit your dog with anything or rub his nose in his mess, and do not punish him after the fact for mistakes that you didn’t catch.

After you correct him, take him outside and offer him the opportunity to go to the bathroom there. If he does, follow the reward procedure outlined above.

After the first couple of weeks, start gradually increasing the time between outings, until he can go for 8 hours or so without being taken outside.

Because you are working with an adult dog who has a firmly established behaviour pattern, it may take a number of months to completely reform him. While this may seem like a long time, compare it to the 3 years you’ve been dealing with the problem! After a couple of months of following the program above, and providing that Fred hasn’t attempted to urinate in the house for at least a month and can go for a full 8 hours without being taken outside, you can start allowing him slightly more freedom.

To start with, you can let him off leash in one room of the house, while watching him constantly. Do not let him out of your sight or let your attention waver for an instant.

When you trust him 100% off leash, you can start letting him out of sight for brief periods of time, checking on him frequently and remaining aware of his movements. Gradually wean him back to normal life over the course of a couple of months.

What are the consequences of not sticking to the program, or letting him have unsupervised “accidents” in the house?

If you are inconsistent in supervising Fred, thereby allowing him to go uncorrected for even one “piddling” incident, you risk teaching him that he can urinate in the house when you aren’t looking, thus creating a huge setback.

“Sometimes” isn’t good enough. In order to change this behaviour for good, you have to enforce a new set of rules consistently. And you have to do it over a long enough period of time that you completely eradicate the old behaviour pattern.

It was probably inconsistent, “he’s been pretty good lately, let’s give him a chance” housebreaking tactics that led up to this problem.

Don’t jump forward in the program or give him extra freedom simply because you’ve gone for a few days or even a few weeks without an accident. Take it slow; you’re changing an old, well established behaviour.

Other considerations

It may also be useful to place Fred’s food and water dishes at his favourite marking spots as an incentive for him to keep them clean.

If you can hold yourself to a high standard of patience and consistency, I foresee a happy, odourless future for you