Nearly 6 months - not toilet trained overnight

[caithnini]

We got our golden retriever Rosie in mid Feb at 9 weeks old. At first we crate trained her and she was dry overnight from day one. Amazing! She's been toilet trained to go in one area of our garden since she was about 12-13 weeks? And has only had one daytime accident since then.

But a couple of months ago she outgrew her crate/or maybe just wanted more freedom? She started to bark and bark for an hour if left in her crate. So we instead started to leave her in half the kitchen using playpens. Don't know if it matters but she has maybe 5m x 3m. Our schedule had been loo her at 10pm and get up at 6am. So she was comfortably able to wait 8 hours (we've stuck to the same schedule whilst on covid WFH to try and ease her transition back to us working)

From the time we started leaving her in the half kitchen she has accidents overnight about 1/3 of the time. There's no pattern to them - we've tracked and can't spot one anyway!

During the day she sometimes barks asking to go out or to be played with. But again we've left her on our normal working schedule and only let her out and play with her when the dog walker would be here or when we would be home. That means she goes 3 hours at a time during the day between toilet breaks. She usually barks two or three times then gives up, plays with one of her toys and waits.

During the night it seems like she doesn't bark until after she's left the puddle. For the last 6 weeks or so we've tried waking up at 4am to loo her but even with that she still has these accidents between 4-6am

Also in the morning she wakes up before the 6.10 time we come downstairs and has started just barking nonstop until we come down. We have a camera and can see at that time that she's already had the accident so it's not barking to go out. It's just attention / company seeking.

We're both really tired of waking up so early and with the broken morning sleep. This week we started to shut her in her crate again but she was so unhappy with that - even though we often find her curled up in there at 4am. She barked for ages last night, so we ended up caving and letting her back into the half kitchen.

Does anyone have suggestions of what we could do to break her habit of having an early morning wee inside, without using a crate? And preferably to stop the barking too!

Sorry this is so long, in summary any suggestions on how to toilet train an adolescent dog overnight without a crate??

Thanks!

[FuckyNel]

Well I’m a softie plus my first dog was a golden retriever called Rosie - she’d be straight upstairs in a bed next to me

[FuckyNel]

We need a picture too to correctly assess the situation as well

[Windyatthebeach]

Could your kitchen be letting in light and waking her up earlier? Our dpuppy 7 months goes 10-6. Curtains are black out with a small plug in light in the room she sleeps in.. No accidents ever and she has been crate free for 2 weeks now.

[Floralnomad]

If the dog is only clean because it’s locked in a cage then it’s not got the idea that you don’t do it in the house so I’d go back to basics and get up regularly in the night to let her out . I also agree with the pp that if she were upstairs with you it would be easier to monitor what’s going on although I appreciate that not everyone wants a dog upstairs .

[caithnini]

I don't think my last message posted? I think it was the photos, will try to shrink them.

Thank you all for the replies.

She's dry during the day when she isn't locked away and she only wees in one (now brown) spot in the garden so I think she does understand to go outside?

Sorry I'm not keen on dogs upstairs and my husband definitely wouldn't go for it.

The light is an interesting idea. We have those thin vertical blinds in the kitchen which block no light. I hadn't thought of that as an issue. Maybe we can rig something to block out the light and then look to get black out blinds or curtains. We have patio doors with extra full height windows either side. Plus another large window over the sink. And it's south facing.. it's very light in the morning. Thank you for the suggestion.

Will try and post photos

[caithnini]

Hopefully a few of my favourites. The one with food on her as she practised "wait" :)

[vanillandhoney]

It sounds like she needs to go in the night and only held it before because she didn't want to toilet in her crate.

Can you set up a baby monitor-type thing so you can see/hear her and go out and let her out? I'm afraid mine still needed letting out at night until he was about one - not regularly but I'd say 1-2 times a month.

Mine has never been crated but he sleeps in our room and wakes us up by banging on the bedroom door to go out. He regularly goes 9-10 hours without needing to go out but he's two now so quite a bit older than yours.

[FuckyNel]

She’s beautiful 🥰