# Soiling



## kyleburrows (Jun 6, 2011)

Help!!!
Buddy (11 weeks) has worked out how to use only a certain area in the garden to for a poo but has now started soiling inside the house.
At the moment it is only in the garage ( which has been converted to be his room). it has happended when he has been denied access to other member sof the family, either when we have been bathing the kids or my wife has been working in th eoffice upstairs.
I reprimanded him when I found the mess (took him to it and said NO! but did not rub nose or smack as felt unfair and counter productive).
I appreciate he is young and is probably an attention thing but have to nip this in the bud ASAP.
Any suggestions?
Once again much appreciated
Kyle


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## kellygh (Oct 25, 2010)

Buddy is young and most likely does not want to be separated from the group. If he is anxious, reprimanding him after the fact will only make it worse IMO. You should never reprimand after you find a mess. It is in the past, and the puppy will make zero connection to the incident. You can only reprimand if you actually catch him in the act. I read a great saying here: You should get a newspaper, roll it up, and then pop yourself on the head  If your puppy may soil, then you should not leave him unsupervised. So you can take him out for a pee/poop & keep him with the family or crate him. Are you crate training? This is ideal if you are not. Read some other threads on this topic, and I'm sure others will respond; however, please do not reprimand after the fact. You will teach your puppy not to trust you & become more anxious. He has no clue what you are telling him "no" about. Best wishes. These are some of the joys of raising a pup  BTW, it is normal for pups/dogs to return to the same spot for relieving themselves.


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## Linescreamer (Sep 28, 2010)

;D My head hurts! Yes, read all the crate training posts. Also, if you are not cleaning the soiled spots (with the appropriate cleaner) he will do it again in the exact same spot. It's what they do. We are the humans who need to read, learn and understand how they think and use it to our advantage!


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## redrover (Mar 17, 2011)

How much space are you giving him in the garage? At 11 weeks, there might simply be too much room available to him. I crate trained Jasper, and at 11 weeks I still wasn't leaving him unattended unless he was in his crate, which was divided off so it was smaller.

I used Nature's Miracle products to clean up the soiled spots when I would have an accident (since it was my fault he went inside, I call it my accident!). I discovered them back when I had a cat with chronic UTIs that would urinate on the furniture--if it can get rid of the smell of cat urine, it can pretty much get rid of anything, IMO!


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## kyleburrows (Jun 6, 2011)

thanks redrover. Yes it is a big garage and maybe us trying to do the good thing by giving him lots of space we are doing the wrong thing. What I cant get my head round is that the outside door was open and he could have gone outside if he wanted yet he chose not to.....


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## redrover (Mar 17, 2011)

My guess is that the idea of going outside instead of inside just hasn't totally sunk in yet. Or maybe he's not exactly clear on where "outside" is--maybe he thinks the garage is outside. Jasper had a hard time with that, since I live in an apartment--there were a couple of accidents in the entryway, because we were clearly "outside" the apartment itself, haha! When you first started potty training him, did you carry him outside and/or through the garage itself? If so, at what point did you set him down on the ground? Our problem was that I started letting Jasper walk outside earlier than I should have (about 10.5 weeks), resulting in accidents. So I just started making sure to carry him all the way out to the grass where I wanted him to potty, and after a week or two of that, he was good to go!


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## Linescreamer (Sep 28, 2010)

kyleburrows said:


> thanks redrover. Yes it is a big garage and maybe us trying to do the good thing by giving him lots of space we are doing the wrong thing. What I cant get my head round is that the outside door was open and he could have gone outside if he wanted yet he chose not to.....


Nothing for you to think about here. He is a puppy and doesn't know any better. We need to show them what is acceptable, and what is not. What he does know (or will find out) is that he doesn't like to sleep in his own mess. It's best to crate train him now, or you will be dealing with this the rest of his life. This is just the beginning for you. If you as his teacher and owner are going to be more concerned about how much space he has to play in, your going to be in for allot of headaches! Our job as owner, pack leader and teacher is to; show them the ropes, draw the lines and be consistent. If we don't, it just gets harder and harder. That's when we develop lumps on the head from hitting ourselves repeatedly with the newspaper! ;D


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