Same ole story with a twist
 

I have looked around on here for a while and hoped I might see a similar circumstance. I am, like many others on here, experiencing potty training problems with my little one. I adopted her two years ago and she is now 5 years old. I'm guessing she didn't have a lot of consistency in her potty training. If I try to crate her while I am gone, she will go inside her crate and gets poop and pee all over her. If I gate her off, she will both go on the pad or paper, and off, and sometimes will walk through it and get it on her. If I let her roam when I am gone, she will go wherever she wants, both on hardwood floors and bedroom carpet. When I am home she barks at me every 20 minutes to go out. When she goes I give tons of praise and couple Cheerios. When she doesnt she gets no praise and no Cheerios but still dances around like she is expecting some. She acts like the boy who cried wolf! What can I do as after 2 years I do not feel any progress has been made and I am afraid I may have to give her up. Help please.

When do you feed her? You might have to adjust her feed time to later in the day when your home, and don't have to crate her.

Thanks for the reply. I feed her once in the morning before I leave for work which is about 7am and then when I get home which is around 5:30pm. How do you mean?

Well, I can't tell you I am the greatest at pottytraining my pups, but I do know that if you feed her at 7 am you need to make sure she empties before you leave for work. I feed my dogs later, like after noon and then around 8 pm. I just do that because if they don't go to bed with full tummies, they will throw up bile in the morning. If you think of her as a wolf-dog, she would have to spend half the day scavaging for food before she eats, so it isn't very natural for her to eat so early in the morning. I also have a timed feeder, so you could set a timer to go off around one, and then I bet she could hold it til 5:30 when you get home. These are just suggestions, but it is important to vary her routine now since what you are doing isn't working quite right. Experiment! My dogs do well eating later, and some may not. But I am home most of the day, so I can watch them and their schedules. Don't give up! We are trying diapers. The diapers say "now is not the time to go potty" and then when we take them off, they know "okay, now is time to go." It surely makes them less prone to want to go, and makes me feel better about leaving them on my carpet. hope this helps!

My sympathies! Been there.

If just plain ol' starting over doesn't help, the diapers do work - if for no other reason to allow you to keep your house from being ruined, keep the stress in the family down, and thus hopefully keep her. I had a rescue yorkie that just wasn't well trained (or trainable it seemed).

What kind of food are you feeding her? Some foods have more fillers than others so they will have to go potty more often.