The impossible to house train dog

[sparkygrace]

My husband and I have a nine month old retriever who, as the title says, we can’t get house trained. We crate trained her immediately when she was seven weeks old. Despite going out mulitple times at night, she pooped and peed in her crate. Now, she still poops in her crate at night and poops in pees in a larger kennel. Only a few nights a week is she able to hold it. This morning I found one of her dog beds in the garage soaked in urine. She pees on the bed and lays in it. (Yuck)There have no signs of a UTI, but that’s on the list to check. She is not spayed yet as our vet wants her to go through one heat cycle.

We have two retrievers. The older dog is great. Both of them are outside during the day in our big, fenced yard. Our vet is flummoxed and suggested an anatomical or behavioral problem. This dog will poop in the garage, in the truck, and anywhere she feels like. There is no timing, she goes whenever she has the urge. We have changed food, feeding times, and after being outside most of the day, she goes out for an evening wallk and out again around 10:00. She gets lots of exercise.

I’ve had dogs all my life and have never had a problem house training a puppy. My Shetland Sheepdog puppy was totally house trained in a few days and all of our other retriever puppies of this breed were house trained in the first month.

Does anyone have some tips on how to get this dog house trained? I’m so frustrated. Everything that has been successful with our other dogs is not working. I’m afraid she’ll end up like a friend’s lab who was never house trained. Like us, they never had a problem with previous dogs.

[hoopoe]

how is she with other aspects of her training? Is she a bit dim to catch on?

Personally I would check blood work and urine again paying attention to liver function and bilirubin crystals in the urine.

Could she have a liver shunt which is impeding her learning?

[OverandOnward]

I have no training advice on this, but it strikes me that the behavior you describe seems as if she can’t actually control it. It isn’t a natural behavior for a nearly-grown dog to pee in bed and then lay in pee. That is really telling, to me.

Is there any advance notice at all, even if it is only a few seconds before? A whine or anxious look? Indicating that at least she knows it’s coming, even if very very short notice.

Is there a difference between a dog who didn’t get proper house training during the time that they can really learn it, and a dog who truly can’t control when they pee and poop? For some reason they cannot hold it?

[rockymouse]

^
That’s my thought as well. I recently learned of a kid who can’t tell when he has to go to the bathroom. He can’t physically feel the signs…and then he just goes, whether he wants to or not. (He’s being treated for it somehow.)

I wonder if you dog is similar?

[luvmyhackney]

Yikes that is so troubling and poor you having to constantly clean up.

Hope you can get to the vet and get some diagnostics.

[sparkygrace]

She is smart and has a very happy personality. I would say she is still very immature when we compare her development to our other dogs. She picks up training quickly, but does get excited on the leash or around strangers. She is very friendly.

@OverandOnward

Is there any advance notice at all, even if it is only a few seconds before? A whine or anxious look? Indicating that at least she knows it’s coming, even if very very short notice.

This is the strange part. She rarely signals that she has to go. Sometimes my husband will hear her whining around 5:00 am. He will take her out for about 15 minutes. An hour later, he’ll see she pooped in her crate or kennel. All of our dogs have gone to the door our made some noise when they wanted to go out.

I plan to take her to the vet next week. Previous bloodwork has been fine. More and more, I wonder if it is behavioral because some nights she can hold it just fine. The peeing on the bed happened during the day. The bed was not inside her crate or kennel.

She did pick up Giardia last spring and was treated. A follow-up showed she was clear. Otherwise, she has been a healthy puppy. Just a frustrating puppy.

[Warmblood1]

How much is she being fed per day and how much water does she consume? Is she on buffet style food? Does she inhale water?

A urinalysis as you said would be good. There are some things they can tests for that routine bloodwork won’t show such as an abnormal pH that would encourage bacteria/crystal growth, etc.

Does she ever have abnormal stool? Or just random solid poo’s?

What’s the longest time frame she goes between potty breaks?

[sparkygrace]

She is feed twice a day and has access to water until night time. sometimes she finds pear or apples dropped from the trees despite our efforts to pick them up. Eating them gives her loose stools. Otherwise, she has normal stools.

She has access to the yard all day. We leave the garage door open so she and the other dog can come in if it’s too hot. A few months ago we discovered she was coming in form outside to pee in the garage! We thought that stopped.

The longest she goes without a potty break is eight hours at night. She has been in her kennel for up to five hours during the day when we have gone to an event in town. She is kenneled or crated from 10:00 pm to 6:00 am. Last night she was crated and did not poop or pee.

[OverandOnward]

@sparkygrace

All of our dogs have gone to the door our made some noise when they wanted to go out.

Just for what it’s worth, probably not much … since dogs do learn from other dogs and she has good examples all around her, that makes me wonder what is happening in her brain.

Since she’s smart and trainable in every other way, and the dogs she lives with have proper habits, I do wonder if either she can’t hold it and/or her body doesn’t give her advance notice.

It’s interesting, it’s kind of like a long car trip and the human realizes they need to pull off in the next __ minutes for a rest stop. But what if you don’t know until it’s actually happening? And what if you just think that’s the way life is?

I wish you luck working out a solution for this sweet dog. It’s an awkward problem, for sure.

[Warmblood1]

Oh my, she went in the garage to pee!

How many cups of dog food a day do you feed?

If she sucks down water you could limit water intake and also use ice cubes alone to slow down water consumption. I’ve had some dogs that would drink so much they pee all day. One that would pee just standing around. I couldn’t give free choice water until she was totally out of the puppy stage.

Is her kennel really large? If I have one that’s pottying in the kennel I try to make it just large enough they can stand, circle and lay down, no bigger.

[sparkygrace]

She gets four cups total, maybe a little more. Yes, she does have access to water all day because she has pool. May be time to dump it. She also driks from the sprinklers.

She has a 4’ x 5’ kennel with an open crate inside for sleeping as well as a large crate outside the kennel. She can’t move around much in the crate. This photo taken about six months ago shows the older dog who decided to steal the puppy’s crate and the puppy who loves the big dog bed. The one she peed on over the last few days.

[Warmblood1]

She might be drinking so much she always has a full bladder and can’t hold it long. Maybe dump the pool and give a specific amount of water each day and see how she does for a few days. The pup I mentioned earlier would also run while peeing. It was crazy. But limiting water consumption did the trick. I would think if she had difficulty holding her bladder she wouldn’t be able to go a night without peeing. Some dogs will pee in their sleep, however, and have bladder control otherwise.

Not sure where she is at night but if not in the kennel in the pic, I’d put her in there. If she has peed in that kennel already, maybe it’s still her drinking lots of water.

[sparkygrace]

I’m going out now to tell my husband to dump the pool. The crate in the picture is where she sleeps some nights. If she doesn’t poop on her nightly walks or at 10:00, she goes in the bigger kennel with a crate inside. That 4’ x 5’ kennel has a rubber mat floor so it’s easy to clean. We put down puppy pads, too.

[luvmyhackney]

Just a thought… and you have probably already tried it… have you tried feeding pm meal earlier in the afternoon?

My foster dog does best if being fed around 5 pm so she has time to process her food and poop on our 11 pm walk. If I feed her later she wakes me up around 3 am to go out.

I pick up her water an hour before bed time as well to avoid the middle of the night wake ups.

[sparkygrace]

Yes, we moved her feeding time from 5:00 to 4:00. Since she is in her crate or kennel at night, she has no access to water.

[luvmyhackney]

Welp I wish you the best figuring it out cause she is darling in the picture you shared.

[sparkygrace]

She certainly is a cutie! We love her despite her issues.

[mjwright]

How was the litter raised? Were they potty box trained or pooped where they slept? This would say a lot if she pooped where she slept before you got her…

How frustrating…

[SummerRose]

Unfortunately, I have no solutions to offer but one thing about your initial post caught my attention - you said you crate trained her at seven weeks old? Is she one you bred? If not, that sounds pretty young to have been separated from her mother and littermates, at least in terms of socialization. If you got her from a breeder or a rescue/neglect situation, I’d wonder if poor care/management practices before you got her led to behavioral issues.

Can you work on training her to go potty on command? There are a lot of internet resources that suggest training strategies for that. I don’t think it would completely solve your problem, but it might be worth trying. (Once you have all possible health-related causes ruled out, of course.)

[Hightale]

Obvious question, but I can’t see that you specifically mentioned this ……Have you actually done any training that tells her that going outside is the right thing?
Our last pup had initially done brilliantly with overnight house training - she was quick to be clean in her crate.
But she then had free rein to be outside with our other dogs during the day and as a result would just go where she was when she got the urge.
That was great if she was outside, not so much if she was indoors.
I had to specifically teach her that it should only be outdoors. I did it by putting aside a couple of days spending as much time with her as possible, never unsupervised in the house (literally attached to me!) and praising & rewarding her to high heaven when she went outside.
She picked it up pretty quickly, but it took a while to be consistent.
Also unless you’ve thoroughly and specifically cleaned with biological washing products or an enzyme remover anything or any area your pup has messed on will still have a trace of the scent and that can encourage them to go on that spot again.

Sorry if that’s all stuff you know already x