1.5-year-old dog STILL having accidents after 7 months of tether training — now anxious + worse than ever. I need real expert help.

I need help with my dog’s potty training because I feel completely stuck.

I have a 1.5-year-old neutered small dog, and I’ve been doing the tether/umbilical method with him for seven months straight. The ONLY reason he’s been accident-free is because he is physically tethered to me at all times. That’s literally the only setup where he won’t go in the house.

The problem is, that’s not realistic long-term. At some point you’re supposed to give the dog more freedom. But as soon as I do that — and I mean ANY inch of freedom — he will go inside the house. If I’m not physically attached to him or staring at him, he’ll slip away and poop (and sometimes pee). It doesn’t matter that he knows how to go outside and actually goes immediately when I take him out. He’s gone WEEKS with no accidents, but only when tethered. The second I try to move forward, he has accidents again.

And it’s not because I wait too long. I take him out every single hour. He still finds ways to go inside, even if he just went recently.

He also seems to have certain “triggers” that make him go inside even if he just went outside: if he jumps off the couch and runs around the corner, if there’s stress or raised voices in the home, if I’m focused on my puppy and not him, if it’s raining or cold, or sometimes completely out of nowhere even when nothing stressful is happening.

This past week, after trying to relax the tethering a little, he’s now had several accidents again and it feels like we’re going backwards. And honestly, seven months of being tethered constantly has made him more clingy and anxious than he used to be, so I’m scared I made things worse even while trying to do the “right” thing.

For what it’s worth, I don’t scream at him, I don’t punish him, I clean everything with enzyme spray, and I crate him whenever I can’t watch him. I’ve done everything people say you’re “supposed” to do. I’ve done so much research and I feel like I’m doing everything right, and it’s STILL not working.

I’m looking for advice from anyone who has had a dog who is only accident-free when tethered, and immediately starts going inside again the moment you try to give them any freedom. How do you actually transition off the tether without constant setbacks? And is there a totally different approach I should be trying at this point, given his age and how long we’ve been stuck here?