Dogs driving me mad! Advice

[SassyCrab]

I have a French bulldog who is 3 years old and originally from Romania, he’s toilet trained but doesn’t like to hold his wee in at night so put puppy training mats down! However, he’s driving me mad and I’ve got to the point where I can’t stand it especially now I have a child which I want my house to be clean, even if the garden door is wide open if no one is sitting down stairs he will just wee on the rug! And it seems like he needs to wee about 20 times a day. Is there anyway of stopping this as I can’t stand it, my house begins to smell and it’s driving me insane! I’ve banned him in the front room at night, but it seems like he’s doing it during the day when I pop upstairs. He just does what he wants. Advice please

If he's a rescue then he's probably neutered? There may be some issues because of that, he might have been neutered too early and has anxiety (which is why he's barking when you're not there, he's scared and trying to "summon" you) or there are some medical issues. The steroids probably make everything worse. He's not being "naughty" OP. There are many reasons a dog might be offering unwanted behaviours, but naughtiness is not one of them.

I'd have him thoroughly checked by a vet, to make sure that there are no medical reasons for his behaviour. Make sure to do a blood panel. And if it's not medical, then try and contact an experienced behaviourist. In the meantime, get rid of the puppy pads and start housetraining him, like you would with a puppy. Lots of praise, gentle voice, and don't leave him alone at night.

Exactly what @MuffinsAreJustCakesAtBreakfast said. Your dog is not toilet trained and (assuming vet visit does not bring up medical issues) you need to go back to basics with house training. The Dog, Training, Advice and Support Facebook group has some excellent guides which can help you with this. This is definitely a solvable issue but will require some intense input from you for a few weeks.

I'm not going to train it. Not my dog.

If he isn't sleeping well he will need the toilet at night.

Toilet training is a matter of building solid conditioning to go on a specific surface, to wait until given access, to ask to be given access...

To achieve that you have to build motivation/desire to ask you and have you involved in the process.

In practice that means you taking him out and rewarding him for pee/poo in the appropriate place (on a surface significantly different from anything found indoors), within a second or two of that pee/poo happening - so not after he has trotted back to you at the door (that would be reinforcing him for coming back to you/the door, not for toileting where you wanted).

It's highly likely he is conditioned to toilet on soft absorbent stuff - pee pads, carpets, rugs, clothing left on floors etc, all feel much the same to him.

Relieving himself IS reinforcing in its own right, so without you adding extra reinforcement for going on the right surface AND managing him so he has no opportunity to make a mistake, he isn't going to learn what you want him to learn.

Keep him in the same room as you at all times - yes, that means at night too, t his is likely to mean he sleeps far better and is less likely to need the toilet at night.

Stop providing pads indoors, they're confusing. Similarly having the door open so there is no need to ask you, there is then no involvement, no reward from you... blurs the lines between in and out.

Take him out super frequently initially to work out when he is likely to need to go.

Reward with food and praise every single time he toilets in the right place.

Don't let up on this fairly intensive supervision and management for two or three weeks - you have a strong habit of toileting on indoors surfaces to break.

To transition out of your room at night - when you would trust him to have free access back from where he sleeps to your room, gradually start to move his bed further away from your room - if he comes back to sleep on your floor rather than his own comfy bed, you know you've taken this step too fast/moved too far, just take it back a step or two and try again in a few days/weeks.

The end goal should be that he will come and ask you to take him out, sleeps well at night so does not need to go out at night, and doesn't toilet indoors.

I would get him checked for a UTI, but i suspect the issue is he is not sleeping well and just hasn't actually been toilet trained.

A dog flap might help? But otherwise, back to basics and a crate when you pop upstairs.

He isn't naughty. He's doing exactly what you've taught him to do when you aren't there. Pee inside, on a mat.

He's a dog, they won't differentiate between puppy pad and rug. You have to take them out at night until they can hold it. You can't let them pee inside sometimes but not other times, that's confusing for them.

It sounds like he doesn’t know how to ask to go out when he needs to. So either you need to take him out for a wee before you go upstairs or leave him so he doesn’t need to go. Or train him to ask with bells, barking or finding you.

Toilet trained means doesn’t go in the house. But it sounds like he doesn’t want to go inside, but is being left with no choice because he needs to go and can’t get out.

as others have said vet trip for the frequency issue

If the trigger is you going upstairs I'd try and tackle that so sprinkle grated cheese around and pop out just for a moment whist distracted then gradually increase the time. Try to make you going upstairs link to a positive experience. Worth a go if you've not tried it.

This is all excellent advice (apart from rewarding peeing/pooing outside with food, if you have a greedy dog, the dog might not keep doing their business until they're really done, they break off after a few drops because they want the reward so badly, and then they finish inside).

Yes its a risk they may 'fake it' but in order to build desire to involve the human, and break the habit of toileting on other surfaces, it is necessary.

If you can use something else to reinforce toileting outside, you can - but it needs to be sufficiently high value to build that 'alert the human, wait until they come' element.

The reward point is 'as they finish up' and if they do start to either fake it entirely (seen some crafty pug puppies do this!) or just do a few drops, you can reduce the reward quantity or value - come in, count to 10 and go back out again - usually I find that the combination of reinforcement for going plus super vigilant management means this is a phase that passes quickly, if it happens at all.

If a dog is using toilet trips to the garden to attention seek, then that suggests there is another issue - not enough interaction/attention/games/training, or what is being done is the wrong sort of attention.