Im almost at the end of the line now with my 5/6 month old pup. She continuously wees in the wrong place and she knows full well when she has made a mistake as she hides and goes to the place where she is supposed to be.
What she keeps missing though is that the reason that I am angry is because she wees in the incorrect place all the time!
I cannot take it anymore - I dont want to be angry with her so I dont I just leave her alone while she ponders her mistake. I tell her she is a naughty girl and then I leave her alone - despite her knowledge of it she still continues. I even praise her when on a rare occasion she gets it right.

Help me I really dont know what to do.

p.s - her water intake is carefully controlled

When you say 'the wrong place', do you mean she should be weeing outside in the garden and she is doing it indoors ? Is she weeing little bits all the time or big wees just now and then ?

You shouldn't have to control her water intake - she should have access to water 24 hours a day.

Daisy

Pickles,

Like Daisy, I'm not a 100% sure what you mean   Is it simply a house-training problem where she is going indoors rather than in the garden?  Or is she not going to a specific place outdoors that you're trying to train her to use?

Also she may have a urinary tract infection and so be partially incontinent or suffering pain when weeing and constantly feel the urge to go :(  If there's the slightest chance that this applies (ie it's not poor training) she should be checked over by a vet as, left untreated, these types of problems can cause much more serious ones.

As to controlling her water intake - that is both dangerous and pointless - you will only cause any infection in her system to become stronger and add strain to her kidneys.  Also there is a significant risk of dehydration :(

Can you please respond with some further details about your young bitch?   You've asked for help and there's plenty folks on here who will be happy to respond if you can just clarify your problem :)

Regards, Teri

>I cannot take it anymore - I dont want to be angry with her so I dont I just leave her alone while she ponders her mistake.

I'm not at all sure that dogs can "ponder their mistakes", with respect, Pickles! It suggests a more sophisticated reasoning that may be reasonable even though I recognise you are fed up to the back teeth with all this widdling. Has she ever been reliably housetrained or is this a regression? And when you did train her, was it outside from the outset or by using pads or paper?

Ever get the feeling that some posters like to worry us and swan off to watch telly? :D  If I posted a query on here I'd be checking for replies every couple of minutes - perhaps I'm weird DON'T dare agree with me :rolleyes: :P

:P

Where is the correct place and where is the incorrect place she uses?

>What she keeps missing though is that the reason that I am angry

Absolutely! She doesn't know that she's done wrong - all she knows is that randomly you're giving off negative body language and an angry tone of voice, which scares her so she goes and hides.

What tone of voice do you use on the occasions you 'even praise her'? Remember she doesn't understand English, and words are meaningless sounds, probably like her wuffs and yaps are to you, whereas other dogs would know exactly what was being 'said'. Tone of voice is everything - praise has to be said as excitedly as if you'd just won the lottery, or you might as well be saying 'cabbage' to her.

I agree with the above posts, and it would be useful to know if you are able to be around all day to housetrain, whether you have ever used newspaper or puppy pads (which can make a dog think it is OK to go in the house) etc.

My guess is that she thinks it's OK to go in the house, but that you get upset at "wee", not at where she's done it. You have to see things from the dog's viewpoint and it's often not the same as ours, even though our thinking imay seem very logical.

Reasons for housetraining problems can be:

medical conditions, age related problems, environmental change, incomplete/faulty housetraining, breed type, inadequate management, substrate preference,anxiety, and infections and congenital and anatomical malformation!

Pickles

Am I right and you live with your mum who has a Westie.  Presumably your mum was able to train the Westie as it isn't mentioned now as being a problem.  Could she not help you with this?

Just given what you have said it seems as if you are assuming your little pup has human understanding of right and wrong, she really doesn't know why she is upsetting you only that you are angry.  She isn't trying to try your patience but she obviously cant help it because she doesn't know where she is going wrong. 

It really is going to be back to basics for this puppy and please don't restrict the water intake.  If your little dog isn't getting enough water she will pee stronger urine more frequently because it irritates her insides.  Giving her more to drink will redress the balance.  She may wee a little more to begin with but as her bladder gets used to holding more - less irritating liquid her control will improve. 

She needs to be taken out by you every hour from now on to toilet.  If she doesn't do anything try running around and playing for 10 minutes the stimulation will most likely make her wee.  My guess is that you will still have some accidents but I would hope to see a vast improvement within 2 weeks if you stick to it.

Please don't give up just yet.

My ignorance of many doggy related matters is legion - I'd run for shameful cover in the ring, for example - but of houstraining, there's times when I honestly think I could do it for England. Or rather Ireland. :)

And what I know is that there are no halfway measures and no short cuts to being OUTSIDE with your dog at what might seem tiresomely regular intervals. Praise has to be fulsome and relate to the BEHAVIOUR you are praising - in other words when you are stood in that freezing cold garden with a widdling pup, not when you are back in the warm again!!  Assuming that a pup has the sort of reasoning power of humans is a short cut to an untrained dog because they cannot "ponder" their mistakes. Indeed, they've usually forgotten their mistake moments after leaving it on the floor for you! Any sort of intermediate measure such as paper or training pads give mixed messages about the acceptable place to wee and poo and pups usually can't tell the difference between carpet and puppy pads. Not least because that's another piece of sophisticated reasoning that isn't shared between humans and puppies. I'm sure there are housetrained dogs who can be trained - in certain circumstances - to use pads or paper but I'd respectfully suggest that this is after they are RELIABLY housetrained under normal circumstances.

Hi Pickles,

Since you're back on forum on another thread, care to fill in the blanks about your own dog on this one so that perhaps we can help?

Regards, Teri :)

patience is key , yep.

and I'm still waiting, tra la la laaaaa!!! :D :D :D