German Shepherd pooping in all the wrong places.

reggieroo

Hi,

My German shepherd insists on pooping all the places I don't want him too.
I have just landscaped the whole rear garden & gave him a graveled area at the top to poop on. I designed the garden this way as when at my parents house he would only go on the gravel & not the patio.

The problem I'm having is he insists on going on my tropical flower beds & the patio walkway. I have had to resort to barricading the borders off & it just looks awful. Spring is nearly upon us & nothing will grow with the urine & poops he keeps doing. I have spent ££££s on tropical plants & even planted in a way I thought he wouldn't be able to go on them. I thought I had dog proofed the garden but obviously not!

He will actually go out of his way & cause himself more hassle just to poop on the borders rather than go on the gravel at the top of the garden. He has even bashed his way through the barricades & squashed himself in to the smallest places just to go to the toilet.

I have tried everything I can thing off inc sprays, garlic water, chili powder, ground coffee in the hope of discouraging him to go there. I have caught him in the borders & chased him out with a stern no! Nothing seems to work.

Why does he do it, I can't imagine he does it to upset me but some days it feels like that as he knows the places he shouldn't be. One area is roped off in an effort to stop him but he just hops the rope, sneaks in when I'm not around & leaves me with a poop covered plant.

Help!

Mikey

Welcome!

Sounds like he's just in the habit. Break the habit by putting a larger (temporary) border around the garden, and take him out on a leash to do his buisness-as if your training a puppy. Take him to a new spot (preferably where you have put some of his poop-hey your picking it up anyways-just pick it up and put it where you'd like him to 'go') and hang out in the new spot saying 'go potty' or whatever you said when you were initially toilet training him. Then praise and reward-just like when you initially potty trained. Give treats too! You can also put a potty training rock in the new area you'd like him to poop in. New ?potty Rock? Rocks The Dog Training World

Just keep that up until it's habit (ie. when you leash him to go potty he goes strait to the spot you want him to and doesn't try to go over to the expensive garden)-then you can take down the baricades

fawkese1

ditto what mikey said... reward him a lot for going where you want him to go and he will learn to go there... keep him going their by leashing him and walking him out to that area...

oh and ditto the welcome as well...

reggieroo

Thanks for the welcome,

I have been moving the poops & putting them where I want him to go for a about a month now. I also seem to be getting mixed results with washing down areas etc. I have read some info saying that dogs don't like to poop in the same place & other info saying they will only go back to the same place to poop.

I tried washing down the patio with disinfectant to remove the scent with no results. Yesterday I went out to clean up, removed some poops from the gravelled area (he does go there when out of space) & the patio. I hosed down all areas & within an hr I went outside & he had pooped on the patio. I tried disinfecting the patio but just washing down the gravel with water but he still goes on the patio.

The only time I can get him to go on the gravel area is when he has covered my walkway with poop so I have to leave it there. As soon as I remove the barricades which have been up for over three months now he goes in the borders as soon as I'm not around. last week I forgot to put up one of the barricades as I was in & out the garden, within half an hour you can guess what was all over my plants????

You would think he would be out of the habit of going in the borders after a few months wouldn't you? It's rare he goes in there, only when he gets the chance but I want to remove the barricades now spring is here & start to enjoy my garden.

fawkese1

my dog will poop in the same place, which is where i went with him and rewarded him for going, until it is too poopy, then he'll go in other places (normally i clean it up really often, but right now it is frozen into packed down snow/ice, and i cant get it out, anyone have any ideas?)
if you are going to leave him out there to just go wherever then this is going to be really difficult, my dog is mostly in the house, when i was training him, i would take him to the appropriate spot and when he went he would get rewarded.
i would try to keep the patio area as clean as possible, and put just a couple of poops in the gravel area....

from what you are describing, i don't think that you are giving him enough info to get out of this habit, try to make going in the spot you want him to go very rewarding for him, and it will take a couple of months to build a good habit and reward history...

i totally here you about wanting to enjoy your garden, but i'm sooo jealous you get to have spring already! lucky...

good luck...

reggieroo

It's very difficult to actually catch him having a poop, I don't think he likes going with people around in fact he has never gone while I'm in the garden.
I've tried watching him from the window but as soon as he starts to go & I go out he stops. I've thought rewarding him for going in the right place would help but finding it difficult. I've tried telling him "good boy" when cleaning up poops from the right place & saying "no" when cleaning up from the wrong place in the past but I don't think he understands.

Somebody once said to me " you can't have a nice garden & have a dog, its the dogs garden now" I thought no, so designed it in such a way so I could have a tropical garden & be dog friendly. I so hope I was right & he was wrong as if not I have just spend thousands on a tropical garden just for Zeus

Oh & spring isn't quite here yet but some shoots are starting to come through on climbers etc, won't be long before other stuff starts to come through. It was mild the other day & I got a chance for the first time to spend the day in the garden while making a Parrot stand Zeus was well happy.

alfi

I had a similar problem with Liza at first. She was pooping in the wrong place, not in front of people plus she was eating them! I found out that saying "no" while cleaning the mess or catch her while pooping in the wrong place she was picking it up like "no don't poop at all" like pooping was a bad thing. As soon as I stopped saying "no" and just grab her and take her outside or clean the mess and ignore her and give her high value treats for going outside plus more stable hours for walks etc she stopped using the inside for toilet. It takes time and courage to housebreak a dog...lol!

Gone2Dogs

It is possible too that he is marking (like he would likewise with pee)over all those smells you are adding or even an area where maybe a stray dog or cat has marked and he is 'reclaiming' his space? Even if the area is frequented by a squirrel or similar he may be feeling he is marking his stuff. Possibly washing it with enzymatic cleaner would help. Constant supervision is about the only way you are gonna control such a determined guy.

fawkese1

i would try putting him on a longish leash... and taking him to the desired spot, then turning your back on him, or you could even set up a temporary trolley there, and when it is time for him to poop, take him out to the spot and clip it on, then walk far enough away for him to feel comfortable to go, but try to stay close enough to tell him what a good boy he is and give him a really good treat for going there...oh and if he likes his privacy, maybe you could create some sort of visual barrier for him to poop behind? like a large plant box with lattice or something so that his toilet area is more private? that would be good for the garden too, then his poop would be less visible for you...

i wouldn't say anything to him when you are cleaning the poop... it is so far after the fact that at best it means nothing to him, and at worst he is thinking you are sorta scary/confusing when poop is around...

oh and one more thing... i try to tell people to expect this sort of training to take a really long time bc especially at first, people tend to get really frustrated with it (poop is gross after all) so if you can be pretty consistent with it for say 3 months, and you see improvement... i would give yourself another 3 months of training time... i know it seems like a long time, but it will fly by, and it will totally be worth it when you are done, especially since it sounds like you enjoy your garden so much...

i hope all that helped you, good luck...

reggieroo

Well so far so good but I don't want to count my chickens

I couldn't do some of the suggestions that were mentioned like taking him on the lead to where I wanted him to go because he just thought he was going for a walk.

What I did do was to keep moving his poops from the inappropriate place to the correct place while he was watching without saying anything to him, I just moved them & went on with my business. I also tried to catch him going in the right place so I could reward him (that was difficult) but today I seen him from the lounge window(which is tinted so he couldn't see me watching him), I quickly grabbed a treat & went out to give him praise which he lapped up

Even before I gave him praise he has been doing them in the correct place, maybe just coincidence that he has been good with his poops but anyhow today's praise should reinforce that he was a good boy doing it where he did.

I have also netted off all the beds & borders using bamboo canes & fruit net & so far that has kept him out. Fingers crossed I'm on the right track, although I have been here before with various behavioral problems I thought I'd solved for him to go straight back to them the minute I thought it was all good.