My son and I adopted a 10-year-old (or so) Beagle mix from a rescue shelter a couple of weeks ago. She'd been in the shelter/pound only about 10 days after being picked up wandering the streets. We've been working really hard to housetrain her, but it's not going well so far. Here is what we've been doing:
- many walks per day to same location with positive reinforcement (and treats) for peeing
- crate introduction with toys and feeding in crate, and time with door open (and much praise from us)
- 5-10 minute crate time trials, where we leave the apartment then come back in after several minutes and praise/walk her immediately.
- moving dog to another room during mess clean-up, and treating with Nature's Miracle to eliminate scent.
- giving treats in crate, and sometimes crating her while we are in the same room for short periods to normalize the crate time.
- quick walk before crating to empty bladder.
Still, she pees in the crate and just sits or lays in the pee at least once or twice per day. At night, she sleeps on a rug next to our bed and hasn't peed once during the night since we got her - so we know she's [I]able[I]to hold it. It's only in the rest of the apartment when our back is turned, and in the crate when we leave the room. Vet says she doesn't appear to have any medical problems, but I will note that in the rescue shelter paperwork it said she was soaked head-to-toe in urine when they got her.
Any suggestions? We're going out of our minds trying to train her before I have to go back to work, when she'll be home alone for 6 hours at a time.