Any extra tips on helping puppy understand where to wee?

[allhailtheaubergine]

My 9 month old rescue pup is rather anxious about weeing. In the 3 weeks we have had her we have only seen her wee twice. She has decided that the spare room is a good place to wee. Goodness only knows when she sneaks off to do it, but I am forever finding puddles there. If I close the door she wees as close to the door as she can. She must also be weeing in the garden but we have only seen her do so once.

Obviously I am not getting cross with her for weeing in the spare room.

I have praised her for the wee she did in the garden.

We have frequent trips to the garden both together and by herself.

I keep cleaning the spare room very thoroughly to remove wee smells.

I have mopped up inside wees and taken the cloth outside, put it on the grass and praised her for 'wee smelling cloth on the grass'.

The one inside wee I saw her do I immediately raced out to the garden with her in the hope she would do the rest of it outside. She didn't, but I made a fuss of her on the grass anyway.

It is not getting through. She simply genuinely believes that the spare room is the right place to wee.

And because she is so anxious and secretive about weeing it is hard to convince her otherwise - I have nothing to work with.

Any ideas?

Hmmm, I'd say you were doing everything right. However I do have a suggestion as I had a similar problem once.

Dogs are denning animals and have a natural instinct to not soil their 'den'. So I think you have to make her aware that the spare room is part of the house. Can you take her in there a few times a day to play with her, maybe give her a couple of treats in there. Lie down and cuddle her or maybe you just go in and read a book etc. Let her see you using it and create some good associations for her in that room so that she realises that this is part of the house - her den.

Also do you give her treats when she goes outside? The next time she goes outside, let her think she's hit the jackpot. Give her several of her favourite treats, one after the other.

Also you need to give weeing outside a name, whatever you like, and when she goes then praise the behaviour so she knows what she's being praised for, e.g. say 'good toilet!', NOT 'good girl'. And give treats of course! You don't have to give her loads of treats each time, just occasionally - that way she'll always be hoping for the jackpot!

Thank you. Some helpful tips there. I will give your suggestions a go.

I would go right back to basics and be prepared to stick it out longer than her

Keep her on a house line indoors attached to you - then she can not sneaky go off to wee in another room.

Take her outside very hour to start with. IF she does wee outside praise like crazy and treat her with the best treat ever a bit of liver, chicken, hotdog or cheese.

Then back indoors again keeping her on the houseline.
I expect what will happen is that she will not wee for a very long time - she may even hold on until night time. I would crate her which would help her from peeing at night. If she has not peed at bed time put her in her crate and then in half an hour go and let her out again.

She will have accidents and completely ignore them. Do not huff even subconsciously she will pick up on it. you may find it easier to put her in the garden when you clean up.

I had a rescue bitch that went a whole weekend without weeing!

The other thing to consider is that she may have been trained to wee on newspaper(something that you should not do) however if she was will she wee on newspaper in the garden? If she does you just cut down the size of paper until it is so small she will forget about it. Worth a try.

When cleaning up the wee in the spare room remember to use a specialists cleaner or biological washing powder. Any other type of cleaner will actually make the wee smell stronger to the puppy and encourage more weeing even thought to us it seems clean.

Biological washing powder? I didn't know that. I have been mopping with a good splosh of dettol or floor cleaner. All tile floors.