Struggling to toilet train a Doberman
 

Hi, we have a Doberman puppy aged 14 weeks. We have had her for almost 5 weeks now and she seems to be going backwards with her potty bahavior.

At the moment she seems to be trying to hold it in when we take her out to poop etc and then lets it go as soon as she comes back in. Just earlier she had been out for 15 minutes and pooped as soon as she came back in after peeing twice earlier, once in her own bed.

She is using all different areas of the house including our bed, her own bed, the living room, the hall way, the family room etc. There appears to be no pattern to it whatsoever and no sign of any improvement.

We give her lost of praise on the occasions she does go outside and a stern No, when we catch her doing it inside. The fact it we're struggling to catch her because she's a stealth dobie it appears.

Both myself and my wife have had dogs before, in fact we also have a 12 year old dobe now and we've never known anything quite this bad.

At night she sleeps with the other dobie in her crate outside (we don't shut the door yet) outside our bedroom door. We put paper down and she actually does use this to pee on.

She gets on great with her 'sister' and is a real character, but this is posing us a lot of problems not least of which I work from home and I'm struggling to get anything done because I always have one eye on her!

Any advice gratefully received.
Thanks
Tim

Welcome to Pets.ca, [B]Tim[/B].

At your pup's age, she shouldn't be having run of the house. It's important that she be supervised at all times so you are able to interrupt her if she's about to "go." How often do you take her outside? If she's going not long after she comes indoors, then perhaps she wasn't outside long enough.

At that age, we take pups out every 1.5-2 hours for at least 30 minutes. If they pee and/or poop, we praise, praise, praise and offer them a treat. We take them out immediately after eating, playing, and naps. We also get up in the middle of the night to go out and not allow them to pee on a paper as this usually just serves to confuse them and delay housetraining.

The quickest way to success is to be consistent, vigilant, offer her many opportunities to be outdoors, praise, and patience. She may still have accidents for months to come but they will be fewer and fewer.

Oh, and feel free to post pictures of your girls :).