i have 2 pups that have access to the garden 24/7 via a dog flap. the dog flap has been a god send as i was getting up several times a night to toilet at diffrent times. the pups sleep in the kitchen and never dirty inside.
when i bring them in to the living room off the kitchen they will play then run out to the garden to toilet then come back in. i feed them out the back as well so the dog flap is there life line really. now my yougnest pup who is 10 weeks took to the flap idea liek a duck to water, she was bred indoors and had never really been out side. my older pup who is 12 weeks was kennel bred and so used the garden as her toilet from the time she was born.

the pups are happy with the set up, and i have quite nights now becasue they dont need me for anything.

however our eldest pup . pue has developed a strange habit.

i will be in the living room watching t.v amd pue and my youngest pup lupin will be playing. suddenly pue will crouch down staring at me and will start to poo. i say pick her up and take her to the garden. where she just sits there and if i stay there with her she will just sit there. if i leve her she will still stay there for a while. bt will then come back in and will try to dirty on the living room floor again.

she only seems to do it if im there. its almost liek a bizarre from of attention seeking becasue she knwos she will cause attention if she does it.

she uses the garden all day and night other wise. i took her to the vet today and he gave her a clean bill of health. she does look well.

other than not letting her in the room with the family at all i dont knwo what else to do.

any idea?

TBH, your set up with relying on them using access to a dog flap and feeding them outdoors etc doesn't sound like a training regime - more pot luck, when they get it right that's all it is.

Neither are of an age to have total control of bowel or bladder - that will take several weeks yet - and you should still be focusing attention on them every minute of every day.

>she only seems to do it if im there. its almost liek a bizarre from of attention seeking becasue she knwos she will cause attention if she does it

Why would you assume that such a young, untrained puppy, is attention seeking because it needs to defecate?  Perhaps by sitting in front of you she is "asking out" but as you just sit there and do nothing she doesn't have many options!  Pups invariably show obvious physical signs of needing to defecate (not always so obvious to wee) - i.e. circling, sniffing, holding their tail up (when they're not a docked breed) in a strange question mark shape.

You should go back to basics and *house train* these puppies properly - if you make a half hearted attempt at it or leave it to them to make a conscious decision to use the dog flap you'll get nowhere with it and only have yourself to blame.

There are plenty of threads on here covering training - run a search and follow the advice to the letter.

Good luck, Teri

the dogs both will ask to go out by whining and scratchign at the door. also even if i have the back door wide open and lupin goes out to toilet pue will still do this onlt being 5 ft from the back door where i can see her.

she will sit and go and if i go to move her she will move off to another part and try to go and then i pick her up and put her out side and ill stand with her for as long as 30 mins and she dosnt go. then i bring her back in and she dosnt go at all.

and she wont do it again for several days.

last night i was talkign to my oh in the living room the back door was open and both dogs had been playing in the garden for about 20 mins. when all of a sudden pue ran in she went over to the sofa sat down and went to toilet then she ran out side to play again. befor ei had even had a chance to stop her she did it.
also she has become sly becasueshe knows that if i see her squat i will out her out side so she will lie down and do a sneeky pee then run off.

i have always had grete success with dog flaps before and i dont see how it is all pot luck. its good for a dog to be able to go to toilet as they wish with out having to wait to be taken out.

the youngest is dry in doors 100% and pue is dry 99.9% its just this little episode she does every now and again when i am sat in the living room giving my attention to something else. liek the other pup, my daughter or if i am on the phone. it woudl nto make sense that she is askign to go out becasue she goes out to toilet on her own 99% of the time.

Sorry but dogs don't do sly they do hide what they do if they think they are doing something that illicits a bad response from you

TBH I wouldn't expect a puppy "trained"they way your puppies have been to actually understand what you want of them

Toilet training is very basic You go out with the dog it performs you praise, it has an accident indoors you clean up & give no attention. You take the dog out every hour when young as well as the times it wakes up/after it has been fed/looks like it might want to go. As the puppy grows so does it's capacity to go less often increases Until eventually the dog is trained. My puppy is now 6 months old & he still gets praised when he goes to the loo outdoors even though he is toilet trained

My younger dog is now 14mnths old and she still has the odd accident at night so we did take to putting them both in the kitchen before we go to bed.We dont feed them late and let them out just before we lock up for the night.Theres nothing you can do about it but praise them when they do make it outdoors on time.
I have also never known a pup to hide and go to the toilet,they are not like cats,they just do it where they stand.Thats a new one on me too.It would be a little better if they did hide (hehehehehehehe) due to the fact that it always seemed to be me that came down first in the morning,barefoot,and stood in the pile the pup did during the night,strategically placed smack bang in the middle of the kitchen lino.lol

I can't see anything in your regime that suggests that either of your pups have genuinely associated toileting outdoors with being the only acceptable place to go :rolleyes: 

If you honestly think they are "100% and 99.9%" reliable and trained at such a tender age and with so little effort on your part, why do you even need to query the situation?  Perhaps you assume that others on here have dogs that randomly defecate in front of us and it's just par for the course.

Clearly you believe you have training down to a fine art and that your pups are conspiring against you .... if you cling on to that belief you will find yourself permanently scrubbing floors / carpets etc or reaching breaking point and letting one, or both, go.

Teri

my pups go out to the garden using the dog flap on there own, whats so hard to belive about that?

they are shut in the kitchen at night and they never soil the kitchen at all. they always go out side.

when i let them in the living room they will go out side and go to toilet then coem back in i knwo this becasue when they wonder off to the dog flap i watch them through the curtain and they both go to toilet then run back in.

my youngest lupin never goes in the house she always runs out side and when they run back in to me i prwise them then.

one about 4 occasion my eldest one pue has soiled the living room. the last time she did it instead of squatting she lied down and had a wee then ran out of the room to the garden.

if no oen belives that my pups use the dog flap i can video it as proof.

i dont see what you can find so unbelivable about it.

>if no oen belives that my pups use the dog flap i can video it as proof.

>i dont see what you can find so unbelivable about it.

No need - all the evidence of the level of success you're enjoying is aptly demonstrated in your posts :)

>when they run back in to me i prwise them then

So you're praising them for coming in, not for going outside in the first place. Their physical relief of peeing and pooing will be its own reward and they won't associate your praise for doing that because it's too long after the event.

Well I am amazed that these puppies, of indeterminate age and habit, have learned without training to go through a dog flap like so many other dogs you have had.  I am having difficulty following all this because the changes in direction happen so quickly.

I have seen very young puppies use a dog flap to access the garden, just that, they have found a fun place to play.  If they get very excited they will also quite possibly evacuate while they are out there.  In my humble opinion, and I have seen this on many occasions, puppies can have all the access they like to a garden and still come rushing back in for a pee or poo for what ever reason they like.  Could be a lot of things. 

You say something to the effect of moving the puppy around from place to place and still she doesn't go 'for days'.  It doesnt make any sense.  What does make sense is sitting down an making a proper note of what is happening and when.  Have they been fed, is there someone different in the house, have they been taken into the garden and encouraged to go.  You really need to sit down and work out how many times things happen, how long they do go on for and for get about the bizarre attention seeking of your puppy, only humans do bizarre.

I honestly think it's luck rather than training that encourages your pups to use the garden and if it works, then that's fine. However, right now it isn't working since your pup hasn't worked out that it isn't acceptable to come indoors to pee and poo in the living room! I really don't think there are any shortcuts to housetraining and the more time you spend taking them outside and staying with them in order to give praise immediately then the quicker they are properly housetrained.

I don't think this pup is behaving "bizarrely" either. I think it's behaving like a pup that isn't housetrained!

>I have also never known a pup to hide and go to the toilet<

My rescue X breed did this as she had obvuisly been chastised for going somewhere & wouldn't go at all if anyone watched her when i first got her & I've retrained lots of dogs who had only had the owner verbally chastise them if they went indoors, sometimes it was as little as them saying No or Naughty in a slightly annoyed tone

It can also cause a dog to eat it's own poo

i never said she hid. i said she layed down and had a wee so we did nto see her doing it.

i have had both pups since they were 6 weeks old. i started off taking them out side every hour and i was up 3 times a night with them. gradually they started to go out the back following the cats and started to take them selfs out.

pue is 12 weeks now and lupin is 10 weeks and i have not had any accidents with lupin and puepa has soiled the living room 5 times in the whole time. 2 of those times i was in the room but i was walking through the room. the other 3 times i were sat in the room, and i either got to her too late becasue she moved everytime i went to take her out side or the one time she lyed down with a toy and did a sneeky pee.
apart from that there has been no accidents. and actually they play mor ein the living room than in the garden. and all 3 of my cats go to toilet in the garden as well and the pups lernt off the cats.

i have spoken to a behaviourist and he recons the problem is that i have given them too much freedom with letting them have the living room as well, and that they are not able to get to the dog flap in time. this makes sense as they never soil the kitchen.

so for now i am going to tek them out the back every 30 mins that they are in the living room. as they do run mad in the living room playing.

>all 3 of my cats go to toilet in the garden as well and the pups lernt off the cats

You're just pulling our legs now aren't you ;)

Have you not noticed the sort of feedback you are getting from your posts?  No-one so far has supported your view that these pups are trained  - why post about a problem and then backtrack to say you haven't got one or take umbrage at anyone pointing out that your *methods* are certainly not the norm?

Folks on here are happy to help anyone with a genuine issue - as you will recall from your earlier posts re Benji - but for some reason you're not able to see where you're making things difficult for yourself.

Please, please re-think how you are going about things with these two pups. 

Regards, Teri

With all due respect if you have access to a behaviourist and make regular trips to your vets, as your posts state surely you should be trying the advice given to you by them before trying a lot of other things. 

With any youngster, as I am sure you are aware, consistency is the key.  If your behaviourist friend recommends something to you and your vet has backed you up with a clean bill of health i.e. no physical reason why a puppy should be behaving in a way likely to be seen as unusual, you should stick with the advice given for at least a week to see if it works.  Your puppies will only become confused if you change direction too often.

If you want to just chat generally about the puppies or the weather or whatever is bugging you at the moment try posting on Idle Chat or joining in the threads there.  I am very much afraid that if things go along the way they are going you are slowly loosing support here. 

Give us an update of the good things that are happening, its always nice to hear and let us know how your behaviorist and vets advice pans out.