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I have a six month old Chinese Crested puppy that I brought home at eight weeks old. I already have two dogs in the house, both older at this point (schnoodle and schnauzer mix). It was simple enough potty training the two of them when they were younger, the schnauzer was much harder because I got her at 6 months from a hoarding situation which threw her for a loop. But Beetle (although the cutest, he's not the brightest) is just not getting it. Somebody is always in the house, we take him out every hour on the dot. He understands that outside = potty, so he'll go once he's there. But here's the catch: he poops on the floor at least three times a week. I just can't understand why. He knows to go outside. Sometimes I'll take him out, he poops, he comes back in, and poops on the floor even though he JUST went. Sometimes I take him out three or four times in the span of 15 minutes, and he poops EVERY time he's there, comes back in and poops AGAIN. He's a small dog so I understand, but my other dogs are similar in size and they can hold it for at least four hours. If he isn't taken out to pee every hour, he goes inside too. I don't know what to do at this point. The vet says there's nothing wrong, not UTI, we have him on a very high-quality feed, he knows to go potty outside, I never had him on pads, I've had puppies before so I already know what I'm doing(ish). But there is no way I can keep a dog that will pee on the floor after an hour, or one that poops inside no matter what I do. Believe me I love him, but it's just physically possible for me to keep this up. Does anybody know of a solution I could try? Thank you.

 

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No, the way my doors work I can't install any. Plus I live in an area with heavy wildlife so I'd rather not take the chance of the friendly neighborhood racoon or opossum walking it.

 

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Yes, I follow a very specific schedule with him that we've had since I brought him home. Wake him up, take him out, give him breakfast, take him out again, then I take him out every hour until 5 where he eats dinner, follow the same schedule until 10 pm when he goes to bed. He can sleep through the night thank goodness because I crate trained him right away. I think if I didn't have a schedule it would be 10x worse, because I've come to realize that he's just not that smart of a dog and it takes him a couple months before he thinks start to click (with training, routine, etc).

 

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I had a treat baggie for the first few months, but I realized that he'd focus too much on the food to go pee. Since then I've switched the reward to "going back inside." He's a hairless dog so he really doesn't like the outdoors, and he knows as soon as he goes potty he gets to run back inside. So he goes out, uses the bathroom corner, and then runs back to the porch. Sometimes I don't let him in for an extra few minutes though, because often he has a secret "second poop" or something of the like and he goes back to do it.

 

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That's a good idea, I'll try it. I don't react much to his inside accidents other than putting him in the timeout room (it's just an empty room with a glass door, he doesn't like it but doesn't freak out). I know you're not supposed to punish dogs so that's all I do while I clean up the mess.

 

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His diet has been pretty hard to figure out because he's allergic to quite a few things😅. Right now we have him on a grain free, dye free, organic lamb and pumpkin mix. Despite his tiny size he's not a nervous puppy at all, he actually tries to boss the big dogs around sometimes. I started him out with fake turf in his pen, because he could only hold it for 20 minutes at a time at that age and obviously I couldn't be taking him out that much. That turned out to be an absolute disaster though, and I spent probably 2 months longer training him to go outside because he kept peeing inside. Thankfully the peeing has been (mostly) fixed, I was really getting worried for the flooring...it's just the poops that he seems to struggle with. I'm deworming him again this week to see if that fixes anything, but it didn't help much before even when he tested positive for them. He doesn't "mark" inside or anything and he really tries to hold it, so I think he isn't intentionally potty-ing inside. But although he hasn't pooped inside for the past few days, he certainly hasn't spared the porch, so now I have to get on my knees and scrub the whole thing down... Improvement, maybe, but it feels just as bad.