[englishvizsla]

My male pup is now 10 weeks old and in general house training has been pretty easy. He gets put in a crate at night and always asks to go outside if he needs to pee - probably once during the night. In the day his crate is in the kitchen with the door left open and he uses it as his bed. I make sure I take him outside regularly during the day (every time he wakes up, after every meal, etc.) and he's now getting to the point where if he needs to go outside he will go and stand by the back door. However, I've caught him three times now going into his crate and peeing on his bedding and then coming back out again. I know its not because he's been desperate because a couple of times he's only just been outside and been to the toilet out there. It's almost like its marking behaviour.

I'd be interested to know if anyone else has had the same problem and how I can stop him. Its only been three times in the three weeks we've had him, but I don't want it to become a learned behaviour. My understanding was that as dogs were fairly clean animals they would not by choice mess in their own bed.

 

[Vlicked]

Hmmmmmmmm....that's interesting. My first thought was also that it is a marking behavior. Are there any other dogs in the house (or even cats)? You're right, though, usually dogs like to keep their "den" clean. Our pup peed in his crate a few times when he was really young, but that's because we couldn't get home in time to let him out.

One thing I've read is that if you give them too much space, sometimes they'll do this (i.e. sounds like you have a crate in a corner of a larger room he's free to roam in). If you confine him more, the crate becomes more like his den because he has a smaller area. I guess I would try to supervise him more and distract him and put him outside the second you see this behavior (easier said then done!).

But, it sounds like he's getting the hang of potty training otherwise...not sure what it could be! Hope someone else some advice.

 

[UplandV]

Never heard of that either, I would probably not allow him to go in and out of his crate at will. When my dog goes in the crate it's closed behind them. It's their safe place to be when I'm not home or unable to give them attention. Perhaps you want to put dog bed in the kitchen and see if the behavior continues.

I also use a medium style crate so that it's more den like.

10 weeks is still fairly young to be potty trained, although male V's tend to train faster. It's a work in progress, I'm sure that he'll be just fine.

Chris

 

[englishvizsla]

Thanks for the advice. I think I'll try the option of putting a bed in the kitchen too and only using the crate for night time and when we go out. I don't think its going to be a big problem with him as generally he's been great to train and is picking things up really quickly.

He had his second set of injections at vets yesterday so I'm looking forward to being able to take him out and run some energy off him as he's bouncing off the walls at the moment!! We're really fortunate in that we've got lots of open fields a stones throw from our house where we'll be able to let him run off.

As a new vizsla owner I really appreciate all the advice and opinions of the more knowledgeable owners!

Abbie

 

[madaboutvizslas]

Never had a problem with peeing in the crate and she was in there from the day we got her. I think we let her out a few times at night but not that much. We normally put her in the crate at 10:30pm and let her out at 6am. I don't think we let her drink before she went in.

When she was a puppy you just had to get her outside at least every hour. As she got older she could hold on longer (my wife says it was just like training the children!).

At 9 months she still gets locked in the crate most nights and sometimes in a kennel outside. Occasionally at 4am she will yelp to let me know she wants out. Usually if this happens I will try and sneak her back into the bedroom where she likes to sleep beside the bed (and the wife is asleep and doesn't know!).

We also read it pays to really cleam up any messes straight away with a non-ammonia based cleaner. This helps stop them going back to the same place to do it again.