Advice needed
Hi everyone,
Sorry I havnt been around much, pretty busy with classes and finals and the like…but I need your advice about stretch. When we decided to keep him it was mainly because he was an older dog and appeared to have been trained before, including house trained. We crate all of our dogs since the youngest likes to get into trouble when we arnt home so its only fair to crate everyone…so i picked up a cloth crate for stretch and he ended up breaking the zipper trying to get out, so for the time being I figured it would be ok for him to be loose, and he is good. EXCEPT he keeps pooping in the babys room and our spare room… I attempted to reprimand him today for him by calling him to the mess and showing him it was wrong, and he growled at me, at which point I used your advice and flipped him and growled back… Now I know he knows hes supposed to go out side, and I alwasy let him out before I leave, and so does Andy (my man) but it seems he only messes when we arnt home, and he isnt ever left for any significant amount of time. THe longest is once a week when I am at class later so they are alone for about 6 hours. But what else can I do? I’m goin to get another crate, thats a given, but I have the feeling that he is also sneaking off to poop during the night when we are sleeping, and I always let them out right before bed. I dont understand it! Is he voicing his disgust that he is left, or what? What can I do about it besides crating? This is a desperate cry for help because I just do not have the time to devote to fully housetraining him, which I do not believe is the case at all…since he goes outside the majority of the time. It seems that only when we arnt home or are in bed does he do it. On a side note he doesnt tell me when he wants to go out, the others do and he just waits for them to initiate it….any help will be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!
Summer
April 24, 2008 @ 1:58 am
An easy solution. Confine your dogs to one or two rooms. My dogs can only go to the kitchen, living room and dining room. I use baby gates to gate off the hallway to the bedrooms and bathrooms. I have bought the gates at Walmart and Petsmart.
April 24, 2008 @ 1:11 pm
Here is some information from the Dachshund Club of America’s website:
http://www.dachshund-dca.org/faq.html#housebreaking
In short, all you can do is keep trying but you may just have a dachshund that is going to be a life long challenge.
One of the important things to understand is that it may not be a failure on your part, it may be just that he is not going to ever be fully trained.
Keep working with him, keep trying different things. You will eventually find something that works or something that works well enough to keep both of you satisfied.
April 24, 2008 @ 7:51 pm
my advice is not use a soft kennel. we had bought 3 and Matilda got out of EVERY one of them. Hard kennels are expencive at petsmart or petco BUT there is a great site that has very reasonable prices AND they usually send something free with the kennel, I get the medium size and its perfect. We got littel fleece blankies with our kennels. I have two doxies that I could leave out but the other two have to be kenneled, SO everyones gets the same treatment.
The hard kennel has a door he shouldnt be able to open unless he is REALLY smart. Brilliant even!
The website is www.Ryanspet.com they have great prices on other stuff too. We get regular packages from them. Good Luck!
April 25, 2008 @ 9:20 pm
I know we usually think of dominance issues with marking, urinating. Could he be trying when he’s alone to mark his territory. Is he eating at irregular times. Does he get treats throughout the day which could mean more poop at different times. Is he for sure pooping when he goes out? Can he be walked right before time alone? Walking usually stimulates pooping. A crate is vital. It is unlikely he will poop in there unless the crate is too big. I too would shut doors if you can. He is maybe still testing the waters to see who is head pooper in the house. Good luck. It’s great you took him in, I hope it works out.
April 26, 2008 @ 4:10 am
Well Sterch might be just old enough to have some little thing’s wrong and hooman’s with all the love we give you all.. Just how heavy is a poop??? lol 1 or 2 little poop’s just makes you look down when you walk around.. lol
Hay when you hoomand’s do bad (poop) you are put in a place with bar’s (Crate) and when you get out… you go and do the same thing again (poop) and back to the barred place(Crate) That’s just from a Doxie’s side….
hope he get better.. Buddy