Canines First - Housebreaking: Part Two
After faithfully following my steps in the first housebreaking article, a few clients continue to have problems with housebreaking. Below is a list of contributing factors to continued problems with housebreaking.
- 1. Putting an end to supervision too soon.
- 2. Allowing the dog access to too much of the home.
- 3. Not being aware of the dog's out-of-the-ordinary drinking and eating..
- 4. Placing the bells too far away from the living quarters.
- 5. Mistaking "good habits within a particular environment" for a "housebroken" dog.
- 6. Not all accidents are accidents.
- 7. Allowing other people to manage the dog.
- 8. Not accompanying the dog outside.
Putting an end to supervision before the dog is ready is a common mistake. Many owners assume that if the dog hasn't had an accident with supervision within 7 to 14 days that the dog is housebroken. Not true, especially for miniature breeds and young puppies. Miniature breeds can take up to 18 months to fully housebreak with a perfectly executed housebreaking regimen.
Miniature breeds are bred for their puppy-like traits and unfortunately house soiling is a puppy-like trait. Breeders haven't quite figured out how to separate the good from the bad yet. This is not to say that miniature breeds cannot be housebroken but owners must have patience and diligence to win this battle.
Many of my clients have very large homes, and their dogs have access to every room in the house. Dogs look at the home in this way: "We live in these rooms. These other rooms are never used. Therefore these other (unused) rooms would be a good place to use the restroom. There is a door blocking me to the outdoors but there are no blockages leading to the unused rooms. I will take the path of least resistance."
Some dogs don't need a formal dining room; some just assume the corner of a big kitchen is far away enough from the living quarters. Limit your dog's access with baby gates and exercise pens, slowly expanding its access to the rest of the home. Keep its access close to the door used to give it access to the outdoors. This should be the same door that holds their Poochie Bells. Subsequently, if you and your dog sleep far away from the door that leads to the outdoors and your dog exhibits enough maturity to sleep outside of its crate, consider putting another set of bells on the bedroom door.
Keeping a general schedule in mind is a good tenet of housebreaking. However, attention must be paid to drinking and eating out of the norm. If a dog has played hard or become hot he is likely to drink more than he usually does, therefore he'll need to use the restroom sooner than normal and may need to go frequently following the hours after the larger-than-usual water consumption. Being aware of moments like this will help avoid disasters.
As mentioned in the paragraph regarding large living quarters, Poochie Bells are often placed too far away from sleeping and living quarters for a dog that is housebreaking. Consider more than one set of bells to lead the way to the door that will finally lead outdoors.
Clients are often surprised that their dog never has accidents in some environments but does have accidents in others. Some of my clients are surprised when I tell them their dog has had accidents at my training facility because the dog never has accidents at home. This is usually due to the dog having created, with its owner's help, a strong habit of using the restroom in its backyard but when he comes to my facility it has no habit at all within my environment. The owner believes the dog "knows" to use the restroom outside but it really only has a habit of using the restroom in its backyard. If I don't know this, and don't immediately begin to assist the dog with a habit at my facility it will often use the restroom indoors at my facility.
This works in the opposite way as well. Many times I will housebreak a dog to my training facility and the owners are disappointed when the dog goes home and immediately begins to use the restroom indoors. In this case the dog was only housebroken to my facility and has yet to generalize this habit to all environments. Housebreaking the dog at school is a big step to housebreaking the dog at home but more needs to be done at home to insure success. One of my clients noted that her dog was better housebroken at a vacation location than he was at his own home. What we learned while discussing this was that her dog was always monitored by her, and not employed help; he had never been given the opportunity to have an accident in the vacation environment and the vacation environment was smaller than her home and the dog therefore, had few unused places to relieve himself.
The other "accident" clients often deal with is that of submissive wetting. While this is a broad topic it's worth mentioning that submissive wetting is a separate problem from housebreaking. DO NOT scold your dog when it displays submissive urination. This will make your situation worse. It's best to keep excitement to a minimum. Don't look at, touch or talk to the dog. Train the dog through positive reinforcement and good leadership skills in order to build confidence. Finally, before visitors arrive, take your dog out to empty his bladder to help interrupt the cycle of submissive wetting until the problem has resolved itself.
Every once in a while a client's dog will have an "accident". These same dogs will come to my facilities and have A LOT of "accidents" the first day or two and then the accidents go away. In these cases the dogs are not having accidents but rather, they are marking their territory. It is assumed that these dogs are urinating and not defecating. Marking is almost always done through urination. Occasionally a dog will take the opportunity to mark his or her territory while defecating with the placement of the stool. It's worth noting this is not only a male problem. Females mark as well. Not as many and not as often, but a good number of females also mark territory. If a client can't pinpoint why the dog would mark its territory it is suspected there is a problem with the dog-owner relationship. Dogs marking their territory within their home is usually due to a visitor's presence, human, canine, feline or any other.
Many of my clients rely on assistants, concierge and family members to take the dog out for them. This can be a mistake in most cases. People in my clients employ are often annoyed by this chore and aren't concerned with the importance of encouraging the dog to relieve itself by giving it the time it needs or taking it to the spot it likes to use. While family members may care about the importance of the dog relieving itself, they may be dealing with a communication breakdown regarding the dogs habits and schedules. For these reasons I always encourage my clients to do the dirty work themselves unless they are working closely with one other family member to get the job done. Using pet sitters in the middle of the day will typically aid in your dog's housebreaking because the pet sitter quickly becomes familiar with your dogs habits and the schedule of the pet sitter's visits remains the same.
Finally, many of my clients have backyards where they can open a door to let the dog out instead of having to get dressed and walking their dog to the elevator, through the lobby and to a patch of grass. Letting a dog outside on its own is probably the biggest mistake my clients make. Dogs typically do not like to be without their owners, especially dogs of housebreaking age, and therefore, are too uncomfortable to use the restroom. The second problem with not accompanying your dog outside to use the restroom is that you are unaware if the dog urinated, defecated, did both or nothing at all. Therefore, you won't be able to predict when the dog might need to go out again. You also aren't there to encourage the dog to go in a particular spot and quickly. This kind of encouragement will aid in consistent and quicker housebreaking.
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