My partner and I have 2 dogs. The eldest is 2 and we’ve brought him up since he was 8 weeks old. He’s a very well behaved dog and is completely toilet trained. We’ve recently rescued an 18 month old ex-sheepdog from a farm. She was very poorly treated, and as a result is very timid, but is a lovely dog all the same.
They both get walked once in the morning and once in the afternoon/evening, and she usually relieves herself. Sometimes she’s so busy trying to round up the other dog that she forgets and we have to take her out again on her own. I’m at home all day with them both, and she’s fine. At night, she sleeps in the kitchen with our other dog, and every morning we go in to piles of poo and usually a lake of wee.
We can’t understand it and are utterly at a loss as to what to do. I don’t know how she even has any poo or wee to do, and if she does, she is good at holding it between walks in the day, and I don’t think she could be desperate enough to need to go at night. I don’t know what makes her do it at night.
We have tried telling her off (not a favourite because she obviously doesn’t understand it’s a bad thing), we’ve tried ignoring it (worked with our first dog as a pup), we’ve started putting newspaper down for her to go on, we’ve tried taking her out just before bed at 11pm and then waking up at 6am and taking her out then (by then, though, she’s usually ‘been’ in the kitchen, and will always ‘go’ again when we come back).
Does anyone have any idea of what else we can do? I don’t think she’s incontinent because she never, ever has accidents in the day when we’re around. Help!
August 18th, 2010 - 6:55 pm
i would recomend feeding her at around 7pm then take her out for a pit stop and keep her out there for a while then put her out for 10min or so be4 bed even walk out with her at the start,
August 18th, 2010 - 6:55 pm
Two things I would do. Feed only once a day, and feed it early afternoon. This will help with the amount and timing of her pooing.
Next, crate train her;
http://www.sniksnak.com/doghealth/cratetraining.html
August 18th, 2010 - 6:55 pm
maybe you should change the time you feed them
August 18th, 2010 - 6:55 pm
I got my GSD puppy in September and no matter what time he had his last walk he always went toilet through the night. I think it was more of a habit or boredom thing rather than the need to go. We used to leave him the living room and dining room so it was a huge problem. We did a few things and no he never poos at night.
First of all when going for a walk if she does go for a poo, praise her. Give her a treat and tell her she is good.
Second, with the newspaper, we used to put it next to the back door during the day so that if he needed to go to the toilet and the door was not open he went on the newspaper, again we praised him for this and then when the newspaper was removed he knew he wasn’t allowed to go on the floor so would come and nudge me to open the door.
Finally, I HATED the idea of him sleeping in a crate until I spoke to the vet. She explained that if dogs are in a large space they realise there is enough room to go to the toilet and still have room to lie. If they are in a crate they don’t want to go to the toilet in their bed. We bought the biggest crate we could and he carried on going to the toilet every night. We then bought the next size down (still plenty of room for him to move around and stand up if he wished). He did not poo again from that night onwards, every morning he would get a treat for not going toilet. After about a month of sleeping in the crate he absolutely loved it and went in on his own about 8pm because he was so tired and I would just shut the door when I was going to bed. After about 2 months, I started leaving the door open all night and he would sleep in the crate but then get out whenever he wanted instead of waiting for me to let him out in the morning. He now sleeps with no crate in our conservatory with plenty of room to run around and never goes to the toilet in the night.
Hope this is okay and the crate really isn’t as nasty as it sounds at first
Good luck