Need Serious Help Here!

[christypooh402 0]

I am at my wits end and my husband seriously can not take anymore. I am so consistent with Tashi and it seems like we are not making any progress. I know it takes a while for them to get it sometimes, but I am seriously thinking she's just not all there sometimes!

We take Tashi out to potty every single time she comes out of her crate. A few weeks ago, I started blocking off the kitchen so she wouldn't have to be crated all day. She doesn't potty in the kitchen at all, and I even leave a potty pad down for her just in case. Yesterday, I got home and immediately took her out to potty, she did both, and we came in. Not 5 mins later she pooped on my carpet in my room! Today, same thing. I watched her poop and pee outside, she ran for a few minutes. We came in, I threw a few toys for her to chase, then as soon as I start to feed the birds, she goes right to the carpet and poops! Why does she keep thinking that the carpet is her poop place?! My husband is already NOT an animal person. He is fine with birds because they are easily confined. He can't stand an animal who has no respect for the house, and he was raised that dogs belong outside. It is hard to prove him wrong when all she does is prove him right! Tashi is nearly 6 months old now and no matter what breed, nearly 4 months of consistently showing her where to go should at least be partially sinking in! She won't mess up her crate, never has. So, if she can hold it for hours and hours, why on earth can she not hold it for 30 minutes when we are home, because that is how often we take her out. It's getting to the point that when my husband is home, she is in her crate and I hate that. It isn't fair to her or us, but it isn't fair that my husband has to have a dog dump all over the place. (I should add that my husband really is borderline germaphobe). Seriously. And he really is trying, but I am at my wits end so I know he is.

Any advice is so so welcome. I don't know what else to do. Are we destined to confine our dog to the kitchen for the rest of her life?

[Ozzy'sMommy 5]

shih tzus are notoriously stubborn and one of the more difficult breeds to train. i remember watching dogs 101 and they even had that on their checklist at the end of the shih tzu bit. oz wasn't finally "fully" trained until 6 months. but even now at 2 years old he has the occasional accident if i don't get up quickly enough to open the back door for him to go outside to potty.

do you walk her?

[kelly943 0]

Christy, I feel your pain.

My dog does the same thing. Just when u think they got it, you turn around and they forgot it already. My roxie was pretty good for 2 weeks at a time where she will pee/poo on her pad...but there is that one week that she has accidents everywhere...ESPECIALLY on the carpet..and i'm borderline germaphobe also..and having to clean her mushy poo off my carpet makes me feel so disgusted...

Each time she does it, i just go back to square one...and give her treats for doing it on the pad..again, i know their breed is very stubborn..so all i can really say, is just keep working at it..and HOPE they will get it one day.

[mr.coffee 364]

Yeah, it seems like we were still working at 6 months...we only crated briefly at night, other than that Harley had pretty much free run of the house. I'm a stay-at-home dad and was always here to take him out on an as-needed basis. We would go outside every 20-30 minutes, and if he didn't do anything we'd go again after another 5-10 minutes and so on until we got a result. Going out was accompanied by a big to-do of "let's go outside and go potty!" type banter, and once outside, there was much "let's go potty," and "that's a good boy goes potty outside!" Of course any fly on the wall would've been laughing at us, but hey, it worked. Once the clicker started to register as an indication that he'd done something right, we started using that as well. You do have a clicker, right?

Inside, things I consider critical would be: 1. not making a big deal over accidents - any fuss is attention and a form of reward, and you don't want to make her associate negativity with eliminating; 2. immediately removing her from the scene of any accidents, and not allowing her to see the cleaning up; 3. immediately spraying the location generously with Nature's Miracle...

That's pretty much what I got for now, my train of thought just derailed, forgive me.

Harley will be 1 this Sunday, and he still has the occasional accident, albeit rarely and typically only if we're slow to respond to his cues. Oh, yeah, cues. Some dogs make a big show of looking for a spot to pee or poop, others just let fly with no prior notice. Watch Tashi for indications that she's about to, if you can catch her before she's started she'll probably go to great lengths not to go while you're frantically carrying her to the door.

Edited to add: Oh, yeah, and we NEVER used potty pads; around here the place to potty is outside, not inside & to me, at least, pads seem counter-intuitive where that's concerned. How a pad is different from a carpet, a rug, a blanket, I'm not sure I see when looking from puppy's point of view and better not to confuse.

-m

Edited April 21, 2010 by mr.coffee

[Tzumommy 1]

Sent you a PM Christy.

[kelly943 0]

Yeah, it seems like we were still working at 6 months...we only crated briefly at night, other than that Harley had pretty much free run of the house. I'm a stay-at-home dad and was always here to take him out on an as-needed basis. We would go outside every 20-30 minutes, and if he didn't do anything we'd go again after another 5-10 minutes and so on until we got a result. Going out was accompanied by a big to-do of "let's go outside and go potty!" type banter, and once outside, there was much "let's go potty," and "that's a good boy goes potty outside!" Of course any fly on the wall would've been laughing at us, but hey, it worked. Once the clicker started to register as an indication that he'd done something right, we started using that as well. You do have a clicker, right?

Inside, things I consider critical would be: 1. not making a big deal over accidents - any fuss is attention and a form of reward, and you don't want to make her associate negativity with eliminating; 2. immediately removing her from the scene of any accidents, and not allowing her to see the cleaning up; 3. immediately spraying the location generously with Nature's Miracle...

That's pretty much what I got for now, my train of thought just derailed, forgive me.

Harley will be 1 this Sunday, and he still has the occasional accident, albeit rarely and typically only if we're slow to respond to his cues. Oh, yeah, cues. Some dogs make a big show of looking for a spot to pee or poop, others just let fly with no prior notice. Watch Tashi for indications that she's about to, if you can catch her before she's started she'll probably go to great lengths not to go while you're frantically carrying her to the door.

Edited to add: Oh, yeah, and we NEVER used potty pads; around here the place to potty is outside, not inside & to me, at least, pads seem counter-intuitive where that's concerned. How a pad is different from a carpet, a rug, a blanket, I'm not sure I see when looking from puppy's point of view and better not to confuse.

-m

I guess with pads, sometimes, we don't have options (no backyard)..and a pad is the only alternative. I don't know if they know a difference or not..but anytime we're in a room with no puppy pads...and if say a dropped white piece of paper is already on the floor, she'll go on it. She's gone on my brother's homework..lol. I think they know somehow...because she doesn't go on my bed, couch, or myself. Mainly the reason why my dog doesn't go on the pad, is if it's laced with too many pee stains...she's becoming spoiled...and will only go on a fresh pad out.

I agree that you need to let her see you do the clean up..make her see that u are very dissatisfied with the mess. When she has an accident..(when caught in the act) i will say NO! BAD GIRL...and she will try to rub herself on me and i'd just ignore her..she just lays there with puppy dog eyes...and it seems like she knows she did something bad.

[Ozzy'sMommy 5]

we did and still do use potty pads. when i first got oz we lived in an apartment with no yard. he did get walked about 30 mins in the morn and another 30 mins in the evening. but when we were got at work he went on a pad. you may want to try the washable/reusable kind. the disposable ones never really worked for us. oz would run around with them even after he peed on them. and the cost added up after awhile. so we got 4 or 5 washable pads so we always had one clean. you just have to wash them in the machine - hot water, detergent in a little bleach.

what worked best for us was making the biggest fuss over him going ON the pad...treats, a "good boy", belly rubs, kisses, the works. we moved back into my mom's house a little over a year ago when i lost my job. now he has a huge house and a huge yard but i've tried to pretty much stay on schedule - walk in the morning, walk in the evening before dinner. and oz doesn't really go out during the day when i am home but after dinner, late in the evening he will sometimes need to go out in the back to potty after he's done eating.

i echo mr. coffee's advice about the not letting her see you clean it and using nature's miracle to clean it up. and also nature's miracle just came out with an "ultra" version which might help alleviate some of your hubby's aversion to her accidents inside. i can be a germaphobe at times too and it helps me.

[MisterMom 11]

I have 4 of them from 8 to 1. Determining 'who did it' is just a guess, the one year old probably, but maybe the 2 year old, sometimes maybe the 5 year old, but then again it could be the 8 year old if her tummy is upset. Anyway, we (me) just clean it up and go on about our daily life.

Hard turds is easy, soft one sometimes you can scoop up without much mess, pee is what irritates me the most and the hardest to clean :aktion033:

[mr.coffee 364]

Oddly enough, on the rare occasion that we get a poop in the house, it's almost always on tile floor so it's super easy cleanup...the trick with peed-on carpet is to slap down paper towel over it, soak up the bulk. Then get a fresh couple of sheets folded over a couple times and stand on it with all your weight - it should suck the worst of it out of the floor. Then saturate it with Natures Miracle and repeat the paper towel dance.

-m

[Cackle 144]

Well, in my experience it takes a good 12 months before you can trust them, they are as stubborn as all get out. Find out what motivates your dog. Molly relates the best to food, so she got a tiny treat whenever she went out. Mitsi responds the best to praise.

When you take your dog out and she does the right thing, praise like there's no tomorrow, make a HUGE fuss, and give a tiny treat. You must be consistant.

Spend a bit longer outdoors after she's gone because sometimes they will go more than once, which is what's happening to you.

For the accidents inside make sure the spot it totally cleaned. I use some warm water, a few drops of detergent and white vinegar, which neutralises the odor.

After your pet has gone outside and you come in, as soon as she goes to that spot to toilet, grab her and take her back outside while usinga LOUD NO.

It takes time and patience.

Sometimes you think they don't have a brain in their head LOL

[mr.coffee 364]

Man, I remember those days. Harley is one that doesn't offer much in the way of pre-potty visual cues, he just squats right out of the blue so by the time you realize what's going on it's pretty much too late! There were occasions that truly recalled the scenes in Bruce Almighty, carrying a peeing dog to the door, only to get outside and he's already done...LOL! I'm just glad Tzu are little, imagine if we were talking about big dogs with 5-gallon bladders!

-m

[Boo and Gidgys Mom 2]

I guess we have been pretty lucky right from the start. The breeder had Gaboo paper trained when we got him. After bringing him home we kept paper on the tile floor. Everytime he used the paper we made a big deal out of it. I also would get up with him during the night (for the first few weeks) and put him on the paper and say "Gaboo, go potty" my family would make fun of me for this. But it proved to be a good thing he eventually started to sleep through the night. First thing in the morning I would put him on the paper and make a big deal out of him going on the paper. We started putting the paper in a litter box that my husband made for him. We had one inside the laundry room and one out side on the deck. We put in a doggie door and taught him to use it. We eventually eliminated the inside litter box. Gaboo goes out everytime uses the litterbox on his own and comes in and whines until we follow him to the treat jar. We have replaced the newsapaper in his box with the training pads. They are much more absorbent.

They are actually very smart little things, and I'm sure your baby knows exactlly what he is doing. Like some one already mentioned. He is getting attention. He is alone all day and you put him out when you get home then tend to the birds or other things, he knows if he pottys he will get your attention back. We are lucky that we are retired and are home with Gaboo. We had the time to work with him. Maybe try a little more outside time when you first get home and some play time where he can run around. That seems to get their bowels moving. After he has gone good and plenty, then bring him in and make a big deal over him going outside, along with a treat. Good luck.