[Clyde_Dexter]

I was in a similar situation as you. While I would never want to give up my dogs my parents were at their wits end. They wanted the dogs gone, and I do not blame them. My dogs were destroying their home with pee and poo. I have two male yorkie mixes. One is four and the other is eight. My dogs were potty trained at one point in their life. I hired a dog sitter while I went on a two week vacation. I came home to dogs that thought it was okay to pee and poo in the house. I thought they were just upset that I had left and the behavior would adjust itself. I didn't take the steps to correct their behavior and it jus progressively got worse.That was two years ago. Just last week I finally decided that I had enough of allowing my dogs to ruin our home. It was unnecessary and unpleasant. It did require A LOT of work on my part. Here are the steps I took to stop my dogs from going potty in the house:

Get rid of whatever you can get rid of that she has peed on in the house, and deep clean whatever you cannot. Then set up boundaries for her. If she has specific spots in the house she likes to go section those spots in the house off so she no longer has access to them. The first thing I did with my dogs was set up boundaries. I bought a bunch of baby gates/play yards and sectioned off every area of the house I didn’t want my dogs to go potty in or that they had a habit of going potty in.

The next thing I did was set up a schedule. A small dog has a small bladder, small dogs should go out to potty every four hours or so, about 6 times a day regularly. However, a dog that has a habit of going in the house needs to be taken out more at the start. When I first started I took my dogs outside upwards of 10 times a day. Now that they have learned to hold their bladder I only take them out every 3/4 hours.

I made a schedule for my dogs. The FIRST thing I do when I wake up in the morning is take my dogs on a short poo/pee walk. I take my dogs out to the designated pee spot outside right before I leave. If I am going to be gone more than 4 hours I have hired someone to come and take them out. I take them out FIRST thing when I get home. I then take them out on another poo/pee walk during the evening. Then I take the dogs out to go pee again right before bed. You MUST have a consistent schedule. If she is going to start to learn that you expect her to go outside you are going to have to start taking her out regularly.

Designate a specific pee spot for her outside. Take her out there yourself several times a day. Reward her greatly when she goes pee there. Once she starts doing this regularly add in the command “go potty”. My dogs now understand when I say “go potty” to go to a specific bush and go pee.

I had to adjust my schedule by 30 minutes to take my dogs on a “poo walk”. This is a 15 min walk in the morning and a 15 min walk in the evening to encourage my dogs to go poo outside. If your dog will willingly go poo outside when you take her to the garden GREAT! My dogs would not. This was the only way I could get them to start going poo outside and STOP going poo in my house.

If you do not have the time to take your dog out so many times a day or have the option to hire someone to take her outside then you are going to have to train her to go on a pee pad or dog litter box. You’ll have to keep this pad in the same spot and take her there daily and try and encourage her to potty there.

I also started feeding my dogs on a schedule so I can control the likelihood of when they will need to go poo. If they have constant access to food it is harder to control when they will need to go poo.

Every since I did these things it has been FIVE successful days of my dogs not going inside. And I am not kidding. There was constant pee and poo in my house. ALL THE TIME. It was frustrating. It does require a lot of time and patience on your part. Some dogs are harder to potty train then others. For example, one of my dogs will hold his bladder willingly now. The other will not. The only that will not hold his bladder for more than two hours has to wear a diaper when I am not home so if he has an accident it doesn’t get on the floor. You might need to do the same with your girl until she learns to hold it. So far my dog will not potty in the diaper.

This is an incredibly long post. I hope you either found it useful in some way or perhaps were given hope that it is not impossible to potty train an adult dog that has been going inside most of its life. My dogs have been going potty inside for almost two years now. It only took five days on my part to break the cycle. The only thing is you cannot become lazy once you start to achieve success. You have to set aside the time to work with your dog if keeping them in your home potty free is important enough to you. This whole situation taught me that I was being a lazy dog owner. Once I stepped up to the plate my dogs followed.

Also keep up with the specific sleeping spot. Keep her in a specific spot while you are not home. Do not give her access to roam around unsupervised. EVEN when you are home. It's like potty training a puppy. You would not allow a puppy to roam the house unsupervised because they are likely to go when you are not looking. You have to assume three things A) She cannot hold her bladder very long B) she doesn't know where you are expecting her to go so she WILL Go where ever.

Thanks for reading!