Newbie Needing Advice

maui1230

New Member
Hello all. I am new to this community so i wanted to introduce myself. My name is Francesca and my husband and i are the owners of a 2 1/2 year old English bulldog, Ace (male) and a 3 1/2 month old Boston Terrier, Maui (female). Neither one of them are nor will be spayed/neutered as my husband has strong feelings against it. Ace being the typical stubborn bullie, took a little while (2 years) to be completely housebroken. Once that happened, my Husband surprised me with the boston terrier about 1 month ago. Bostons are supposedly very intelligent dogs but why isn't she getting the whole potty training thing? We thought we knew what to do by learing from our mistakes with Ace, but she is still having her accidents.. which isn't the worst part ... Ace is now having accidents. I thought it was just marking his territory, but i don't think that's it anymore. I think he smells her and thinks it's ok. Ace is not really my concern bec. it isn't often that he has his accidents. It's Maui i'm more concerned with. I am crate training Maui. What worked with Ace was we were advised to dump his food in the spots that he had his accidents. So now we are putting her food on the floor of her crate.. now she won't eat it unless we put it back in the bowl. Am i just not giving her enough time?? Does anyone have any advice or pointers?
 

blisandt

New Member
I cannot help with housebreaking since it has been 20 years since I had a puppy (a BT) who was housebroken at 8 weeks. I now have rescues.

I do need to say that you are looking for trouble (and heartbreak) with an intact male and a female anything on the same property.

I hope you (or the recent Oprah Show on rescues) can convince your husband to protect the health and longevity of both of these animals by altering them.
 
M

mtndogs

Guest
It had been 12 years since I dealt with the whole housebreaking until approx 1 yr ago when I got Camden. My older dog would come and get us if she had to go out. Camden didn't seem to know how to alert us she had to go. I tied a bell to the door and everytime we'd take her out, we'd take her paw, ring the bell, praise her and put her out. Within 2 days, she did it almost everytime she had to go out and still does it to this day if we are in one of the other rooms and don't see her standing by the door. When we got Masey in September, we did the same thing with her and it works great for us. My friend also trained her dog this way and it has worked wonders. She has a Purebred Shepard and when she was recently sick and had to go out FAST and more often, the bell was a lifesaver. I know not everything works for each and every dog, but it's worked great for us.

As a side note, we also paid close attention for the signs of them having to go out when they were first being housebroken such as the sniffing etc, always took them out shortly after eating, drinking, waking up for a nap, playing etc. etc. We just lead them to the door, had them ring the bell, lots of praise and let them out.
 
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