I’m losing hope on potty training and need guidance after some recent regression this week.
Puppy is 10months, female, fixed; she’s high energy but relatively easy to train. We got her at 5 months, unaware she came to us with some bad potty training habits.
Some level setting on her training: she is crated when we are not home and at night. Husband works remotely so she is with him all day but contained to his office. She does well in crate at night but still struggles with being crated when we are away, barking most of the time and sometimes taking an hour or two before she settles; she never settles long. We don’t crate her more than four or five hours maximum during the day. Definitely some separation anxiety issues, but that’s a whole other can of worms.
Her food schedule is free feed – she doesn’t eat at all until between 6-10pm most nights where we’re lucky if we can get her to finish her recommended portions. I think she doesn’t like her food but she also has a chicken allergy so we dont have many other puppy food options at the moment.
Schedule wise she goes on a morning walk at the same time everyday, out at lunch, and then out at 5 after work. It’s the evenings we struggle with, because that’s when we start to let her have some freedom. If she has gone poop and pee within an hour or two we let her roam with more relaxed supervision. If not, she stays on a leash close or we watch her like hawks if we can. We treat for most successful potties and cheer, but I’ll admit we dont remember to bring the treats out every time. We’ve had a few good stretches where this is working, but we can never fully let our guard down and relax because she keeps breaking the trust.
She likes to run to another room and quickly eliminate before we realized she’s even gone anywhere. She has a favorite room, which we fully clean with natures miracle after every accident. We never yell or scold, just follow the typical advice of calmly interrupting when possible. It seems like she must have been yelled at before coming to us with the way she sneaks off.
Going outside, she’s terribly distracted. She has a super high prey drive and gets locked on sights and scents to the point that (sorry) her butt will be nearly open and she won’t poop. We have a lot of bunnies and wildlife that we can’t do anything about. She also will only go potty in one area of the yard that has tall grasses and bushes she can hide in. She tends to hold it if we go out in public, which leads to more anxiety and behavior issues.
We also have the bells on the door and have been working on it for months, at least 3. To date she has only voluntarily run them twice without us directly supervising, and that was just last week. I feel like she just thinks “the bells are something we must do before going outside” and not “I need to ring the bells if I want to go outside.” I dont know how to improve that thought process.
Another problem we have is that our house is rather large and long, and there are lots of areas we dont spend time in. Not to mention the house isn’t very open concept, so it’s easy for her to go around a corner and be out of sight fast. To top it all off, most areas of the house dont have a door that we can close off the area. What ends up happening is we either spend our time completely containing her (and ourselves consequently) to the office or our bedroom. It doesn’t feel productive for our mental health or the puppy’s , but every time we let our guard we have a set back. We can never truly relax.
We’re just really struggling as this is our first dog and we’ve never dealt with potty issues to this level with our family dogs growing up. Need some advice, comfort, silver linings, any of it. I feel like I included everything I possibly can here.
She really is pretty well behaved but I feel like I can only ever think about her potty status and can’t focus on the fun or training other parts of her daily life. It makes it harder to get attached to her too, I feel disconnected because all I’m ever thinking about is her poop. Ugh, please help!