pooping in the house

[Kerry Hemphill]

We have an 8 month old mini labradoodle. We love her which is a good thing because the pooping issue is driving us crazy. She has never been great about pooping outside but since the rain has started she is pooping in the house almost all of the time! She is restricted to two rooms in the house and has a bell on the door going outside. She enjoys ringing the bell but not to go outside. What should we do?

[Stephanie and Ragley]

Is she crate trained? Might be time to step backwards in potty training and treat her like a new puppy again until she gets back into a routine. Keep her in a crate if she can't be supervised and make a point to take her out on a very strict schedule until she gets more reliable. It's not totally strange for her to not be fully potty trained at 8 months, but that is definitely not a habit I would want to become a permanent trend.

[Jane, Guinness and Murphy]

I agree with this.  You may have to go back to the basics of crate training and supervise every minute that she's outside of the crate.

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

My son's doberman HATED water - wet grass, rain, anything to do with those pesky droplets.  He picked our dining room as his potty area.  We cleaned the area and placed furniture over the specific spots so he didn't have access.  We took him out and made him stay until he went.  I stood on the patio and literally pushed him into the yard and blocked his going back onto the patio.  He grew to be over a hundred pounds and became well house-broken however he continued to hate water and would hold going until I thought he would burst, so we continued to enforce our going outside with him in inclement weather to make sure he went and didn't rush back inside.

[Kerry Hemphill]

This sounds very familiar. Thankfully Skye will only be 25 lbs at the most. Unfortunately we live in Seattle where rain is inevitable!!

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

And we are in So. California where the rain is mostly non-existant - good for water haters, bad for plant lovers.

[Jess & Stewart]

I agree about crate training. I still do this with Stew-bring him out, if he doesn't go within 10 minutes, I bring him back in for awhile then try again. Then when he goes pretty quickly, within 5 minutes, he gets to stay outside for a walk, sniffing around.

Bring her outside when it's raining and make it a BIG deal. Laugh, look silly to Skye, walk around and splash etc. Bring very high value treats with you, cheese, small bits of hot dogs etc and give them to Skye when she's outside and calm in the rain. I did that with Stew and he doesn't mind rain at all, although he's always taken awhile to find a spot to go to the bathroom but that's another issue.

[Kerry Hemphill]

Thank you. It is back to the crate on a more regular basis. I was hoping for easy potting training like with our last two dogs but no such luck :(

[Meghan Court]

We crate trained Bubba, which I think helped the most, but we also used the bells at the door, and he too used them as a toy, but we were very strict with him. Every time he rang the bells we took him outside. At the time we were in an apartment, so he was on a leash with me no matter the weather, but he learned pretty fast the bells meant outside, not play time. Even if he didn't have to go I would walk him outside and repeat "go potty" so he knew it wasn't play time. But I would say definitely go back to crate training, Bubba has only pooped in the house once and it was when he was sick, so the crate has been a blessing! Good luck and I hope things get better soon!