Now Spring is here & I've mowed the lawn, please help me retrain cocker to pee and poo on the patio!

[NigellasGuest]

He used to do it on the patio but gradually over time moved to the lawn, which I guess has happened because it's easier / it just happened.

obviously now the grass has those dreadful scorch marks. It's not a manicured "show lawn" or anything like that, but it would be good to get him to do it on the patio not least because it's easy to wash down hygienically and it's less likely I will miss a pile of something unpleasant if it's not hiding in grass!

He is 2 and a half now and very intelligent, but even so, is it going to be possible? Has anyone done anything similar please, or do you have any top tips or advice? Thank you!

I'm probably not the best person to give advice as no way would my dog go on a patio! Does he go on a command word? If he does you could put him on a lead , take to the spot you want and reward when he goes.

No advice from me either, my dogs insist on grass.
We've only got a small lawn and it looks a wreck now but it was the same this time last year. In spring I started a routine of pouring loads of water over the wees to dilute it and cut grass twice a week once it started growing, so no chance of missing any poos. We ended up with a reasonable lawn for summer so will do the same this year.
We've got a small push mower which is really handy for a quick mow.

I would get a section of grass turf and put it on the patio to start with. Get the dog to wee on the grass in the correct location. So take them out on a lead and encourage them to wee in this location.

When they are happy with the location I would then remove the grass.

This will need time and consistency from you to work - you must go out with your dogs each time they wee and give a wee command and praise when they wee in the correct place. You will need to do this regularly for quite a while to break an existing habit of weeing on the lawn.

Good luck .... Hell would freeze over before my dog would wee or poo on the patio ... We discovered just how long he can hold on when we were staying in a holiday cottage with a decked garden... It was quite impressive (although probably not very great for him ...)

Our puppy won't do it anywhere but grass too so we've bought a big pen and dedicated an area of the grass to him. He'll still wee where he fancies when we're out playing but it means the majority of wees go in that area.

OK so it's hopefully not impossible! He will poo happily on the pavement if on the lead for a walk round the houses. More often his walks are off lead in the woods etc., but on street walks he does do it, so he can't have much of a pavement/patio aversion.

Yes he has a command word so that's lucky. Good idea about putting some turf on the patio. Should I put a bit off his poo there as well?

Keep us posted on this. Going to try the same with ddog. Fortunately no aversion to patio, unfortunately no command word.

Mine won't go on the grass at all if it's wet she's precious about her bits so I'll get all hopeful that she'll continue using the patio but then it dries up & back to the grass she goes . We're actually considering putting a removable fence in to stop her going on the grass completely during the winter months. I'm not too fussed currently though as the fence needs replacing on 1 side so the grass will get trampled when DH does that.

We just fenced the patio off with an ornamental metal fence , dog is not allowed on the lawns / beds without supervision , we actually did it because as a pup he dug up and chewed a daffodil bulb and was very ill and we have bulbs all over the place . It's a win win though as dog is secure and the garden isn't trashed particularly in the wetter months - we have a fairly large patio though .

That's pretty much what we're thinking of doing Floral but getting 'eyes' on the iron work so the sections can be lifted from the posts in summer . I've got brackets with containers that fit over posts so would just pop those on to make the posts look pretty.