5 year old high maintenance yorkie...still not fully potty trained
 

i have a five year old, cameron, and if he is confined to one room he is great with relieving himself in the correct place. however, give him full access to the house (4 bedroom, 2 living areas, kitchen, library, and computer room) and he will always have an accident. he sneaks away and comes back looking guilty...we search around and find a surprise. he is kind of a high maintenance yorkie to begin with. he ignores other dogs (he had an incident with a german shepherd puppy when he was 2), does not like children under the age of 12, doesn't like any toys, is food motivated to a point of gluttony, and does not enjoy the outdoors. i've read somewhere that adult yorkies are most likely never going to be full house trained. should i just keep fencing off areas of my house? i feel like i can't essentially live my life because i'm constantly watching him. please help...:confused:

Is he neutered?

Truthfully, you should always keep him with you since he sneaks away to potty. Since you are not catching him in the act, there is no way to correct him at that time.

Have you tried treating him for a good potty?

Also, if he is confined to one room, maybe gradually expand his area. Every week he goes without accidents, let him have access to one more room.

Expanding access to areas of the house very gradually is definitely a good first step. Also when you need to roam around the rest of the house and you can't be in his area watching him, you could have him attached with a 6ft leash to your belt loop. You've gotta be able to catch him in the act when he's peeing someplace bad, make some startling noise to stop him mid-stream, then pick him up and run him immediately to the correct potty place for him to finish. And whenever he potties in the correct place, even if it's just one of the "finishes," give him some kind of amazing treat that he doesn't get any other time. It's really great that he's food-motivated - you can make that seriously work to your advantage in potty training him. Make the potty treat the greatest treat in the whole world! Eventually he should learn that pottying in the right place gets him delicious food, and pottying in the wrong place makes mom bark weird and startling noises, so pottying in the right place will become worth it to him.

There are lots of great suggestions, little tricks, peoples' experiences, others to commiserate with, etc. here in this thread: http://www.yorkietalk.com/forums/tra...potty-log.html Hope that helps...

Lauren & Nikko