I am posting this for a friend, hoping someone can give hera suggestion as to what to do. She has a 2 year old Italian greyhound who still pees in the house. He is crate trained and does not pee in his crate. When she goes out, she crates him and when she returns she immediately puts him outside and has him stay out until he does his business. He comes back in and will still lift his leg and pee on something in the house. He is a bit neurotic in that he frequently spins around and always in the same direction. He is also quite skittish but once he decides the new situation is ok, he settles pretty well. She is getting very frustrated with this. If anyone has any suggestions or can recommend an on-line forum that could give her suggestions I, and she,would greatly appreciate it. Thanks in advance.
Sounds like he is marking. Tell her to go back to housebreaking training, and keeping him tethered to her when out of crate. Also Vet ck just to be sure there is no UTI or bladder stones (which I doubt since he doesn’t go in crate).
Clean accidents with an enzyme cleaner. 90% of housetraining is supervision and not allowing them to have an accident.
And while some may disagree, I would neuter him, if he isn’t already. Never had a neuetered dog mark in 30 yrs of owning them.
Italian Greyhounds are notoriously hard to potty train. I have researched them a bit in thinking about what my next dog will be (probably a Borzoi or St. Poodle) and this is a key issue. A lot of people keep a litter box for them rather than typical outside potty training. Tell her to go to this site. This is where I got a lot of info about this breed and these training issues.
http://www.iggyplanet.com/ (will probably need to create an account but it should be free)
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He comes back in and will still lift his leg and pee on something in the house. [/QUOTE]
he is not emptying himself outside. He’s marking inside. He probably doesn’t really understand the “don’t pee in the house” rule.
Since he is an IG, he’s small enough that before she brings him in, she should pick him up and immediately place him in a crate. In 30 min take him back out. Most dogs will hold themselves if you pick them up.
She also needs to teach him to empty himself outside. She can do that by giving him 3 opportunities to empty outside and then picking him up to bring him in. That should be her standard operating practice for the next 2-3 weeks. She’ll see a diff in a couple of days, but to make it a habit for him, she should extend the training well past the initial learning. In addition when she does bring him back in w/o picking him up, if he is marking in the same spot, she needs to either place herself between him and the spot, or if possible, avoid that area altogether.
I’ve had intact male and female dogs in my house since 2001. I’ve had up to 3 intact males and none of them marked in the house unless one was anxious or it had come as a foster with an ingrained marking habit. They did not even mark when I had girls in heat.
