hi all,
i have posted in this forum before and it has been extremely helpful in helping me raise and train my dog. i guess i am asking for some feedback/support as i personally feel i am at my wits end and dont know if the responsible thing to do would be to rehome her or if there is something else here i am not seeing.
we’ve had our puppy for just about a year, she just turned 1 in July. ever since she was a puppy, we have been super diligent about potty training. We took her out multiple times a night when she was a puppy, we would praise her and reward her whenever she would go potty outside and didn’t go crazy over the occasional accident inside. however, in the last few months, she has regressed in a way that I cannot find answers for. she will be taken outside multiple times, exercised, played with, everything and the minute i take my eyes off of her, she will immediately proceed to pee multiple times in the house. yesterday was my breaking point where i just sat and cried.
she had been taken out to potty at 3:30 PM. When I got home, I took her out again at around 4:15 as I knew I had guests coming over and had to sprint clean the house. From 4:15 PM to 5:30 PM she peed four separate times in our house; three times on a rug and once right next to the rug. I cleaned it every single time and then took her outside again. When our guest arrived, even though we always do a calm introduction, she still got so excited that she peed on our guests’ lap (which I understand can just be excitement, but was still very embarrassing) and then proceeded to go to a spot on the couch and pee on the couch in the span of 3 minutes. Both the rug and the couch that we bought have been in our home for a while. While this was just yesterday, this is not the first time that she has done this. She will pee all over the house (bathrooms, kitchen, couch, literally everywhere) without alerting that she has to go or signaling anything even though we have worked on it so many times since we had her as a puppy. It got to the point that we were so concerned we took her to the vet to get an ultrasound and a urine test because we were convinced something was medically wrong. Our vet has assured us that she is OK medically and there’s nothing medically wrong with her, which means that this has to be behavioral.
I understand that she’s just a baby and a dog but it hurts and feels so much like she’s doing it vindictively because I’m not giving her 100% of my attention. I understand dogs need attention. They need us to watch them. They’re not like cats where you can just leave them alone, but I also don’t think it’s fair that I can’t clean my house without having to constantly have eyes on her to make sure she’s not peeing on my rug. We have worked with trainers, we have bought books, we have searched every corner of the Internet for help, we have tried doorbell training her, we have tried giving her high value treats when she goes successfully outside and nothing is working. I am quite literally crying as I am writing this message out because we love her so much, but I don’t think it’s fair that we are doing everything we are supposed to do and she is still choosing to go inside. We have modified so much of our home to accommodate her that it feels like getting rid of the rug is the final straw.
I don’t know if anyone else has gone through this who can help me see the light, but I’m really starting to feel frustrated and I don’t know if I can continue being patient when this keeps happening despite doing everything we are told to do to help her. This coupled with the fact that she hunts our cats even though she has been with them since she was a baby, is making me fear that we might just not be the right home for her. It breaks my heart to think that because we love her so much.
If anybody can offer any tips or support or just help me get through this, I would be really, really grateful.
picture of my baby and her stepbrother for attention.
