[ambocken]

Originally Posted by Ladymom

Do you know what her background is? If she was kept in a cage all her life, she got used to eliminating there and her instinct to keep her "den" clean is gone. Crate training usually doesn't work with these dogs.

How long are you gone? I think it's unreasonable to expect a dog to stay locked up in a crate with no room to move around if it is for the whole workday. An exercise pen with a enough room for a bed and pee pads is a much kinder solution.

I always recommend the book Secondhand Dog to anyone who adopts a rescue:

Amazon.com: Second-Hand Dog: How to Turn Yours into a First-Rate Pet (Howell reference books) (0021898057358): Carol Lea Benjamin: Books

The sad thing is that we have very little idea of what her background was. And the things we were told about her-- we have found is completely opposite to who she REALLY is!!

We were told she was used for breeding, surrendered from the owners because she was nipping at children and crate trained. Only to find that she is terrified of ADULTS and will nip at them but NEVER at children, it took us 2 months to train her not to pee in the house when we are home and after 9 months she continues to pee in her crate. (we stopped working on the crate training for a few months because there were other pressing issues that we had to work on with her instead)

The crate we found she is most comfortable with is a wire one... we bought a larger size so that a bed and pee pad could fit in there... BUT we found that she pees in the bed and then continues to lay in it!! Then we bought large pee pads to cover the whole floor of the crate.... and she pees in the middle and lays in it.......... SO ... ... Here we are still.......frustrated and unsure what to do!