I'll start off by saying that Griff has never been as reliably house-trained as Bella was at his same age. I feel like he's never learned to HOLD his pee. When he was a puppy, I just let him out whenever he acted like he needed to go (and I trained him early-on to sit by the door when he needed to go out). It seemed like it was every 20-30 minutes when he was young - but we avoided accidents that way.
He was TERRIBLE to crate train, and I really don't think he ever truly got it. He doesn't get crated very often due to me working from home, but he still pees in his crate sometimes (even though he hasn't had soft/absorbant bedding in there since he was a little puppy - he either had the bare crate tray or now he's got one of the cusioned pads I bought at ABC), especially if he's in there longer than 2-3 hours (the longest he's probably ever been in there was 6, and that is VERY rare). Also - he has pretty bad separation anxiety when he's crated - if he's not crated WITH Bella, he freaks out, and if he's completely by himself (Bella's not crated with or beside him), he has gotten so bad that he's made himself bleed. How the hell do you fix that? I started crating him with Bella to calm him down in the first place (to let his histiocytoma heal a few months ago), but now it's just seems like it's made him worse.
When we lived in the apartment, he NEVER had poop accidents (aside from maybe the 2-3 he had during housetraining as a puppy). He would have the occasional pee accident, but I take the blame for every single one of those, because it was always when I was too busy or something and ignored his signals that he had to go. BUT - I still feel like he ought to be able to hold his pee a little longer...like with Bella, she will hold her pee when she has to go but can't (due to me not letting her out or her being crated), but with Griff, it's like if he has to pee - he pees (whether he can alert me to let him out or not, whether he's in his crate or not).
Now that we moved into the house, the accidents are happening a lot. He's even lifted his leg a couple times
, and even pooped once.
I know this is our fault - he doesn't know how to tell us he has to go. He goes to the door that we go out of, but since we spend a lot of time in different rooms, he doesn't know how to tell us. And it's not like we spend a lot of time not watching him - he peed right by the door this morning as I was walking over to let him out (we'd come straight downstairs from the bedroom, I was just a few steps behind him). This was the first time I had caught him (to be able to correct him).
Here is my plan to try to fix some of these problems:
- Restrict his access even further (we always try to keep him in the same room with us, but we are going to be more strict about it and start baby gating him more).
- Take him out more often. At this point he's going out at least 3-4 times during my work day, but I'm going to try to increase it.
- Bell train him. It's not that I've ever been against bell-training, it's just that due to the way my previous living arrangements were set up, it just wasn't necessary because the doors we went out to potty were right in the middle of everything. So now that there's a higher chance that I could be in a different room, we're gonna do the bell thing. I am thinking this will help a lot.
Here are the ones I need a little more help with:
- How the heck do you teach a dog to hold his pee when he will just pee anywhere and any time (in the house, in the crate, etc). I know that he KNOWS he's supposed to pee outside - but it's like he doesn't know he's supposed to hold it (or physically can't hold it?) if he can't go outside *right this second*.
- How do I fix his crate separation anxiety? The easy answer would be to leave him out - but with all of the peeing, he can't be trusted to have free roam anywhere!
I didn't realize how bad these separation anxiety was until we moved here and had more room to set up both crates and started crating them separately again. The accidents in the old place were annoying, but not that frequent. Here, it's like his issues have just gotten SO much worse. I know it's going to take some adjustment in the new house to get the potty thing down....I'm just not sure what all I should be doing (in addition to what I'd listed above) to help make that happen. And I'm just at a loss about the SA.
