misunderstanding the reward?
 

Dutch is about 6.5 months old. He was doing decently on housetraining, mostly because I don't give him a chance to have an accident. If I leave him in the kitchen, he goes on his pad 100%.

However, I have recently begun taking him outside so he learns the optimal potty place. He gets tons of love and treats when he goes outside, nothing but a pat on the head when he goes inside, and a stern "No!" usually followed by a bath when he goes inside. He's just begun to squeal and squirm when he needs to go out, which is good.

Since I've been rewarding him for going outside, in the last 3 days he has committed his 2 worst mistakes in months. Once he peed all over the place right in front of me on the kitchen floor. And just moments ago on his way to bed he hopped up onto a pile of dry cleaning wrapped in plastic and peed everywhere. Of course when I said "No!" he ran to his crate but managed to dribble all over the place during his short journey.

My question is, is it possible that he is now associating the reward with peeing in general rather than peeing outside in particular? If this is the case, which I suspect it is, i definitely need to mitigate this notion. Is my best bet to simply continue to scold when he goes inside and give tons of praise and food when he goes outside in hopes that he will eventually figure out that the floor = nono, the peepad = okay, outside = great...?

Interested in comments from anyone who has dealt with this. Thanks in advance.

It sounds like you are doing everything right. I would worry about so many baths though, he might begin to associate bath with potty and it might dry out his coat. He will have good days and bad days. Persist with the plan -- praise good behavior and discourage inappropriate behavior. This seems like a simple thing to you, but to him, you have changed the game and there are new rules to learn.

My girls were pee pad trained as pups. They are now trained to go outside when I take them and if they need to go otherwise, they use the pee pads. I used to have two pee pads in the house now I am down to one. Since they love OUTSIDE they are learning to ask to go out.

Sounds like you are on the right track, it just takes time and patience -- lots of time and patience.

Good LUCK!!! Just be glad that we have Yorkies and not Great Danes!!! LOL

I think he is kind of confused. You introduced him to something new(going potty outside) and I don't think he totally understand the boundries of this change.

Plus I think your reward for going potty inside and outside in the correct stop should be the same. Your inconsistancy is very confusing to your dog as well.

And I agree with Chattiemom. Don't wash him too much. He has natural oil in his hair that need to build up. If you wash him too much it will dry out his coat. Plus he might associate bath with being bad.

good luck

You are training him to use the bathroom in two places. Inside on the pad and Outside on the grass. He is so confused, he doesn't know where to go. Pick one or the other. Yorkies do not respond well to punishment. He is so afraid of doing something wrong, when he doesn't realize what he did. That's the reason for the fear dribbling to the crate.