Help!

We have two Pomeranians. They are two years old, fixed littermates. They have free access to the house and outdoors all day. At night, the door to the outside is closed, and they either sleep on our bed or in the laundry room, with a closed gate. The male is completely house trained. The female was house trained, but over the last couple months she has been pooping (and sometimes peeing) in the house. She has a couple of preferred spots: one is the bathmat, and one is in the laundry room (but only when they sleep in there). She poops during the daytime hours, when she could go outside, and also at night, when she doesn’t have access to the outside. One other place she seems to relieve herself is in a room that is under construction, but used to be the room for an elderly cat we had, who had lost her faculties, so we’d put down plastic on the floor, because she peed wherever she stopped. This cat is since deceased.

I know this sounds confusing -- that’s the problem I’m having! There are so many variables that I don’t know how to narrow down the issues. If we see fresh pee or poo, we try to take it to her, dip her nose in it, and scold her. We have washed the bathmat nearly every day, but in one of the places she goes we cannot fully wash the rug. Do you have any suggestions? Anything would help!

Thank you.

From: Lisa, via THE DOG BIBLE

Dear Lisa,

You have a problem, for sure. Your female has forgotten her housebreaking, for whatever reason -- a trauma, perhaps; maybe even the death of the cat? Something happened to set her back, and you’re going to have to start all over again as if she was a puppy.

She has to be crated in a small crate, just big enough to sleep in -- no room to leave the bed area and relieve herself -- and she needs the walks and total supervision that a little puppy would have. No freedom in the house, no liberty… she has to relearn the concept of where it’s okay to relieve herself, and you cannot give her the “rope to hang herself with” of having free run of the house, and the opportunity to make mistakes she does not know she is making.

But I fear that you never knew how to housebreak a dog, and just got lucky with the male, and even the female for a while. It’s a complex task, but can be done efficiently, simply, and kindly. I’d ask you to purchase THE DOG BIBLE, and reference it -- not to sell one more book, but to save your little Pom from any more humiliation.

Your solution to finding her mistakes has done nothing to help your little Pom, because it’s a cruel and old-fashioned method that was discredited decades ago! Putting a dog’s nose in feces or urine is utterly without teaching merit -- a punishment with no value to a dog who does not make any connection between an action that happened hours or even minutes ago, and the result that lies on the floor now.

Please read all about house training in my book, and then come back to me for fine-tuning, if you need it.

Good luck, and please, keep in touch.

Tracie Hotchner