Can anyone advise what to do, if anything?
Our dog has her own small side garden, which is gated off from the main garden. She has access to it from her own "bedroom" which has a dog door. (I know this sounds like the most spoilt dog in the world - we live in the Middle East and the house layout allows us to do this!).
Since she was a puppy, she has always taken herself outside into "her" garden for a wee if she needs to - obviously we trained her to do this as part of her housetraining. I consider her to be fully housetrained now, as we haven't had any accidents for at least 4 months and she is now 8-9 months old.
The gardener watered the soil in "her" garden last week - he doesn't normally do this as it is bare soil and all the plants are dead anyway since she dug them all up - and she seemed to have quite a strong aversion to walking on the wet soil! I know this sounds bonkers to anyone living in England, but she has only ever experienced dry, sandy soil in her short life, and she's never felt or experienced rain! She might also have been bitten out there, as she has a couple of insect bites on her muzzle. Either way, something has happened to make her wary of "her" garden in the past few days.
So now she will hold her wees and poos in for HOURS, until she leaves the house for a walk. I tested her on Friday night and it was a good 15 hours before she finally went for a wee in her own garden, and only then it was because my husband sat outside with her for a good hour, clicker training her to walk on the wet soil again (by shaping her behaviour in the same way you do the '101 things to do with a box' game) and eventually she went for a wee.
Yesterday, she took herself out into her garden for a wee in the morning, so I rushed out there and heaped lots of praise on her (I didn't have any treats to hand unfortunately) and brought her back in for her breakfast. She wouldn't go for a wee out there before bed last night, so I gave in and took her into the main "human" garden on a lead, where she happily peed.
But this morning, we're back to square one again. She has been outside, but she won't step on the soil (even though it's dry) and she was squeaking earlier because she needed a wee but didn't know what to do. In the end, I took her for her morning walk and she did the BIGGEST wee ever!
I'm a bit annoyed because our life was so much easier when she would take herself off for a wee!! Now I would be worried to leave her home alone, in case she got so desperate for a wee that she chose to wee inside instead of in the 'scary' garden. Also I am concerned that by holding it in for hours, she is going to get infections or worse.
I don't know for sure that this is linked to the soil being wet - it could be something else - she is quite a nervy rescue dog and is also a little feaful of going outside in the dark. It could also be that because this is the first cool week we've had in months, I am starting to spend a lot of time in the main "human" garden, and she is out there with me quite a lot - as a result she doesn't seem to like her own garden any more! I control her access to the main garden - i.e. she only goes in it on a lead - as she is quite prone to digging, which is the whole reason we gave her her own garden in the first place.
Shall I just ignore all of this (and let her hold it in until we go out for walks), or carry on clicker training her to be comfortable on her own soil again?
I don't want to go back to the days before we got the dog door, when she used to ask to go out for wees in the main garden - that was a massive pain, which she used to manipulate to her advantage so I would take her outside more often than she really needed to go. She can't be allowed access to the main garden unsupervised, as she brings so much dirt back into the house and she also digs up and destroys all the plants.