# Still having house breaking problems



## Grasshopper (Feb 28, 2016)

My 6 month old puppy is good in many ways, but I am having problems with the reliability of his house training. At 6 months, would one expect that a puppy still needs to go out 8 or more times a day? I would have thought that his bladder would be growing or maturing. Yes, I used to take him out every hour, but I know I am pressing it if I take him out every 2 hours, and this is getting old. He seems able to last for 3 hours during the day in a crate, but can't do that if he's just in the house. He is now about 9 pounds. He had his neutering operation a week ago, and seems to be healing fine. Two days after this, he peed twice on the floor, despite my taking him out often, and I marked it up to his being disturbed in that region. But today he peed on the kitchen floor without warning. I saw it right at the end, said no and rushed him outside, where I think he completed the pee. But the truth is that I don't think this will do any good. He is just unreliable. I don't believe he has a bladder infection; he was just at the vet's for a whole day, and I think they would have picked that up. So when does the frequency of peeing start to drop?


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## articshark (Apr 4, 2016)

Java is my first Havanese puppy, so I can't tell you when they get completely reliable. She's fooled me a couple of times. lol That said, I belled trained her. And it has VASTLY improved potty times for our house. If it's raining, she will ring the bell, look outside, and run to her litter. If not, she rings the bell and someone lets her out. Now, sometimes she needs to pee and poop. Other times, she just wants to go outside to play. And still other times, she just likes rising the bell. How do I know? Because she'll ring it and lay down under it or by the door with zero effort to make it outside. 

That being said, we haven't had an accident in weeks. Well, going wherever she wants kinda of accidents. She has stuck her front paws in the small litter and peed with her butt outside the box. Is that really an accident? I think not because I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt. lol Also, I have to clean her litter immediately after she uses it or she won't use it again until it's clean. She has started mounding the litter around her elimination- pee and poop. I think she doesn't like the smell. If I don't get there to clean it out as soon as she's gone, her nose starts building a litter barrier. 

Also, reading around, it seems these pups don't become completely reliable until AFTER adolescence. So...


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## Molly120213 (Jan 22, 2014)

Checking a urine sample is not something they would automatically do when your dog was in for his neuter. It would be worthwhile to have him checked for a UTI. Once you have ruled that out you have to go back to basics. Until he is more reliable you have to give him less freedom in the house. He is still young and may still need to be taken out frequently, especially after eating, drinking, playing and waking up. It is hard to be patient with housetraining but he will get it with time. Good luck.


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## boomana (Jul 9, 2015)

My Lola was a horror, which surprised me because she's such a smartie and picked up on everything else super fast. On the day she turned 10 months, which was also the day she went into heat, she just stopped peeing in the house. It was like she decided she was a grown up now. Pooping in the house is also almost over, but about two times a month, she likes to tuck around a corner and have a poo, even if we've just come back from a long walk or a couple hours in the park. I dunno.


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## KarMar (Jan 14, 2016)

As long as your dog is unreliable with potty training, access needs to be limited and you need to keep your eyes on him as much as possible. If you can't be watching him (cooking dinner, etc), put him in an ex-pen close by so that he can see you. I would ask your vet to check for a UTI, as it requires a urinalysis, something they wouldn't do when the dog is in for a routine neuter, especially without telling you.

Every dog is different. Mario, due to poor consistency and immediate run of the house, wasn't reliably potty trained until 18 mo. Nino is 5 months old and hasn't had an accident since 10 days after we brought him home. He's a puppy. Things are going to "get old", and the truth of the matter is we just have to suck it up. Does he have full run of the house? As long as he is still having accidents, I would limit his access to one or two rooms. It's not fun for anyone, but it's necessary to have some restrictions for a puppy that's unreliable. This isn't about frequency of peeing; if you have a puppy that pees in the house, you will end up with an adult dog that pees in the house if no changes are made.


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## krandall (Jun 11, 2009)

Kar Mar hit it on the nose. Every puppy is different, and will train at a different rate. Pixel wa, by far, the easiest of my three. Kodi in the middle, and Panda has taken the longest. But she has also had two UTI's, which have made things harder for her as well as us. 

I am guessing that you don't have an indoor potty for your puppy? That also makes things take longer, and leads to more accidents. 

It DOES take a long time for these dogs tostart signalling when they need to go out, unless you can bell train them. Kodi HATED the bell, so we gave up on it. He didn't have accidents, because we either got him out or he used his box. He didn't start barking to go out until he was close to two. Pixel had very few accidents ever. She was very reliable about using her box, and also quickly started scratching at the door to go out. Panda doesn't like to use the box if there is any other option... AND hasn't yet developed a signal. When she is not confined, I watch for any signs of restlessness, which often mean she needs to go. I ask her, "Do you need to go out?" And she gets all bouncy, and goes as soon as I let her out. So we're getting there, but she is 7 months and I sure wouldn't consider her reliable.


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## Heather's (Jun 18, 2012)

Scout was a fast learner. We took him outside every two hours. It was very difficult because I work 12 hrs. I don't remember him ever using the wee wee pad in his ex-pen. Within the first month he was letting us know by whimpering he needed to go out. Truffles took at least one year before she was reliable. She didn't follow Scout like I thought she would. It took quite awhile for her to understand to go on the wee wee pad. Sometimes she would pee on the pad and go #2 on the floor. I would take her out with Scout hoping she would get the idea. She is now 2.5 yrs old and only recently decided that she only wants to go outside. I still keep a wee wee pad down just in case she needs it. There haven't been any accidents! :biggrin1: It really was my fault it took so long to potty train her. I didn't take her out every two hours in the beginning.


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## RonniB (Jan 21, 2016)

Melo is our first Hav (his full brother comes home Friday - so we get to start all over again) and I had no idea what to expect from him. He does have an indoor potty option for days when I am at work, the weather is crappy, and for overnight. Compared to our previous dog, a lab, Melo took a long time to train. He does have a reliable signal - coming up to you and pawing at you - to alert us that he needs to go. He too hated the bell method, and he won't scratch at the door for some strange reason. I had a friend of mine get upset that I allow him to come up and paw at me, but he only does it when he has to go. And, it's not really on me - it's more like a 'hey, I need to go wave'. 

I'm hoping that with our new little man, he will catch on a bit quicker, but if not, we now have a little more Hav experience to help us figure him out.


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## krandall (Jun 11, 2009)

RonniB said:


> Melo is our first Hav (his full brother comes home Friday - so we get to start all over again) and I had no idea what to expect from him. He does have an indoor potty option for days when I am at work, the weather is crappy, and for overnight. Compared to our previous dog, a lab, Melo took a long time to train. He does have a reliable signal - coming up to you and pawing at you - to alert us that he needs to go. He too hated the bell method, and he won't scratch at the door for some strange reason. I had a friend of mine get upset that I allow him to come up and paw at me, but he only does it when he has to go. And, it's not really on me - it's more like a 'hey, I need to go wave'.
> 
> I'm hoping that with our new little man, he will catch on a bit quicker, but if not, we now have a little more Hav experience to help us figure him out.


Havanese have been my only breed, so I have nothing else to compare them to, though I do believe those who say that larger breeds learn faster. I have a theory that to larger dogs the whole house is perceived as "den" whereas the whole house is so big for a small breed dog that they have a harder time figuring out that the whole place is off limits for pottying.

In any case, I'm patient when it comes to animal training, and after 40 years of training horses, I understand that every animal (and child for that matter) learns at their own rate. I would NOT be happy with a dog who never house trained, as I've heard is common with many Yorkies. I couldn't live with that. But I can be patient and consistent in training when I am working toward a goal. So far, I have two completely reliable out of three. Kodi was reliable except in terrible weather by a year (then we had to watch him carefully) Pixel was completely reliable by 6 months

The third, Panda, is still a puppy, and has had the complication of two UTI's... One that she is currently being treated for while we are traveling with our RV... An added complication. She did great for the first half of the trip, and I was SO pleased. She has had at least one accident per day since coming down with the UTI, but I can hardly blame her for that. We're just watching her like a hawk, and trying to guess when she's going to have trouble. I suspect that when we get home and back on a schedule, and she's finished her meds, things will get back to normal. I have full confidence that she will become completely reliable too, in her own time. Puppyhood is a journey. Sometimes trying, often delightful, and in the end, a short period in the life of the dog.


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## articshark (Apr 4, 2016)

This is so true. About being relaxed with the pups. They pick up on your distress. Java already knows when I'm unhappy about something. But she loves the bell. So that's been really easy for us. 

Which reminds me. At one of my puppy classes, it took about twenty minutes for me to get her from my car to the door. And up open metal stairs. Which I don't think she'd ever felt under her paws. So she kept going up one step and down the other. I just waited at the top of the 3 stairs and waited with enough leash length to wait for her. Another puppy owner came out, clearly frustrated, and asked me if it didn't bug me that they were so slow. I thin I surprised her when I said no. Raising kids, having had previous dogs, I knew it would just take time, patience and hearing other dogs inside and before long Java would come up the stairs regardless of how weird it felt under her feet. It's a Zen thing. Impatience is more about you than about them. They are going at the only pace they know. They don't know faster development or slower for that matter. They only know what they know. Now, this is different than a dog that already knows something and you know they know and they know they know and they still won't comply.


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## RonniB (Jan 21, 2016)

krandall said:


> Havanese have been my only breed, so I have nothing else to compare them to, though I do believe those who say that larger breeds learn faster. I have a theory that to larger dogs the whole house is perceived as "den" whereas the whole house is so big for a small breed dog that they have a harder time figuring out that the whole place is off limits for pottying.
> 
> In any case, I'm patient when it comes to animal training, and after 40 years of training horses, I understand that every animal (and child for that matter) learns at their own rate. I would NOT be happy with a dog who never house trained, as I've head is common with many Yorkies. I couldn't live with that. But I can be patient and consistent in training when I am working toward a goal. So far, I have two completely reliable out of three. Kodi was reliable except in terrible weather by a year (then we had to watch him carefully) Pixel was completely reliable by 6 months
> 
> The third, Panda, is still a puppy, and has had the complication of two UTI's... One that she is currently being treated for while we are traveling with our RV... An added complication. She did great for the first half of the trip, and I was SO pleased. She has had at least one accident per day since coming down with the UTI, but I can hardly blame her for that. We're just watching her like a hawk, and trying to guess when she's going to have trouble. I suspect that when we get home and back on a schedule, and she's finished her meds, things will get back to normal. I have full confidence that she will become completely reliable to, in her own time. Puppyhood is a journey. Sometimes trying, often delightful, and in the end, a short period in the life of the dog.


What type of horses did you train? I rode Morgan horses growing up and now own an off-the-track TB race horse.

Ugh on the UTI. Hope Panda is back to normal when you get home.


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## krandall (Jun 11, 2009)

articshark said:


> This is so true. About being relaxed with the pups. They pick up on your distress. Java already knows when I'm unhappy about something. But she loves the bell. So that's been really easy for us.
> 
> Which reminds me. At one of my puppy classes, it took about twenty minutes for me to get her from my car to the door. And up open metal stairs. Which I don't think she'd ever felt under her paws. So she kept going up one step and down the other. I just waited at the top of the 3 stairs and waited with enough leash length to wait for her. Another puppy owner came out, clearly frustrated, and asked me if it didn't bug me that they were so slow. I thin I surprised her when I said no. Raising kids, having had previous dogs, I knew it would just take time, patience and hearing other dogs inside and before long Java would come up the stairs regardless of how weird it felt under her feet. It's a Zen thing. Impatience is more about you than about them. They are going at the only pace they know. They don't know faster development or slower for that matter. They only know what they know.


Great example. Try to rush a puppy through something like that, and you can create a puppy who is afraid of stairs for the rest of their lives. The way you did it, she will be braver about atempting the next strange surface because she conquered it herself.



articshark said:


> Now, this is different than a dog that already knows something and you know they know and they know they know and they still won't comply.


Except this RARELY happens. It may be that the dog is unable to comply under those circumstances on that particular day, and it can be very hard for us to figure out why.... And they can't tell us. My preference is to give the dog the benefit of the doubt in those cases, and try to train it and proof it in different ways until it is as solid as I can make it. For instance, Kodi had a great dorp on recall. We earned our CDSP Open Champiomship without a single error on the DOR. that means 13 times in a row in competition. Then... It broke. i STILL don't know why for sure, though I have some guesses that aren't worth getting into. So... i went back to retraining it over shorter distances, with bars to drop behind, throwing cookies behind him... We've got it back at this point, so now I've been proofing it everywhere I can. In parking lots, in open field, in dog parks and in all different directions in each of those settings. he has his first AKC Preferred Open trial since the DOR broke next Sat. I'm HOPING I've solved the problem. But if he misses it, I still won't blame him. We'll go back and train some more.


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## articshark (Apr 4, 2016)

Ha! My girl lab was the one who would look at me out of the side of her eye when I told her to kennel, and VERY slowly go in. Seriously, it is usually only things I know she knew, but just didn't want to do. My boy lab would bounce in and wait for his treat. She just didn't care. Treats weren't enough for her to want to go in fast. And then she'd go in, still giving me side eye and sigh. lol 

But yes, anytime I get balking, we go back to basic. Start all over again or from a different angle. If it isn't something I know they don't want to do, but must do anyway. 

Java balks with getting near the car. She really can't stand car rides. But she hasn't been trained enough- for me, at least, to say that she is deliberately not listening. Maybe in a year or so, if she refuses to sit or something... I might conclude that. hahahaha


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