Toilet training help please?!

[CaptainCabinets]

Hello! 5 days into to being in dog club (first time owner of a 17 week old rescue) and we’re having some real problems with toilet training. I take him out to try every hour and we go for a couple of long walks every day but he shows no interest in going for a wee or poo outdoors and will just go indoors as soon as we get back. I interrupt him if I catch him and take him straight outside but it doesn’t seem to be working. We have puppy pads in the house but they’re hit and miss.

Any tips or advice that I’m not already doing would be fab!

Get rid of the pads they will just confuse the dog and introduce a command word , we used ‘ go quick’ , it really does help .

My advice, as the owner of a slightly reluctant toileter (who never would pee in the park at that age until he got safely back home to his own territory, luckily the back garden counted) is stay with him outside until he cannot hold it any longer and then praise praise praise and link action with a command word, like pee. The other trick is the minute they wake from a nap (if you keep them next to you at this stage you will find it easier to judge the moment, either on lead or snuggled up close, lead makes it easier to take them out immediately) go out into the garden pronto and they will inevitably need to pee. Ditto after nighttime sleep, if you can catch him as early as possible in the morning for a few mornings (say wake him at 6am and go outside with him, you will find he cannot help peeing/pooing at this point and it will be outside, so again praise praise) keep this routine up until he has grasped that you are very pleased with any outside action and it will become conditioned that the minute he is on the cold grass or paving that is the place NOT the nice warm lino, wood, or carpet. Pads unfortunately condition dogs to feel comfortable peeing on soft pale surfaces like pillows, door mats and rugs.

Peeing in the right place is a conditioned response, not a moral choice, he won't know till he does it and is given a positive response that it is the right place.

A 17 week old can already hold on for a long time, so my guess is that the post nap/overnight sleep pee is probably your best bet but you may have to intercept her night time sleep a bit earlier than you would long term wish her to wake. A 17 week old doesn't tend to pee overnight but holds on whilst they sleep, so if you wake her first thing you can give the plan a chance of working, rather than waiting for her to wake and pee immediately in the house.

The other trick is to put something which smells of his pee or poo outside where you want him to toilet. It may be that the park doesn't smell familiar enough for him to dare, and the same with outside at home. Also wash any places he has used indoors with white vinegar so he doesn't keep returning to them. V important. Bleach or disinfectant will not eradicate the familiar smell or deter him.

Our rescue was 20 weeks when we got her and not housetrained. She’d been in a flat before and only used puppy pads, but she was even hit and miss with those. Either way she was used to doing her business indoors, so she wasn’t going to gasp do a wee or poo OUTSIDE IN THE COLD!! The following combination worked for us:

• Straight outside the second he wakes from sleep.
• If you manage to get him to go on a puppy pad, take that outside and the smell of his own wee/poo might help with getting him to go outdoors.
• Wrap up warm and go into the garden, either sit with a flask of hot tea and a book/some magazines or do a bit of gardening/pottering about. Stay out for as long as you can and eventually he will have to go. We got our girl in December so I appreciate this is not a fun option, but after 3 days of being outdoors, she got the message that we wanted her to toilet there. We still had to take her out frequently and work on the house training basics, but she had now gone in the garden several times, had her preferred spot to have a good sniff of and seemed to have crossed whatever barrier was stopping her before.