Need advice on odd Bully habbits (Long)
Submitted by macci28 on March 27, 2013 - 9:28pmWe adopted Winnie in September. She is 4 years old. She took to us and the house very quickly. We have three issues going on that we could use advice.
1. When she is left alone: When we are not home, Winnie seems more comfortable in her crate. She has her own bedroom, her crate is in there and we keep the crate door open for her so she can go in and out of it. The problem is that we can not put anything down in the crate to make it more comfortable for her, or give her a bed in the room because she will pee on it. No matter if she is alone for 1 hour or 5 hours, she will always pee on anything we give her when she is alone. She also has no problem laying in her pee. When we are home, she sleeps on her beds around the house and never has an accident.
2. Going to the bathroom- Winnie has to go constantly. She also doesnt like to pee and poop on the same trip out, so she will do one, come back in, then want to go out again within 30 minutes to do the other. We walk her each time (no fenced in yard) I never rush her and stay outside trying to get her to do both but she rarely does. She has been tested for UTI and stones, everything came back fine.
3. Sleeping at night- she refuses to sleep through the night. She has her own bed in our room. She wakes up every single night, multiple times and walks around the room trying to wake us up. She will either want food- (second you open bedroom door she runs to where her food is kept) or she wants to go outside to the bathroom. We don't give her water after 9 to eliminate her havng to pee and it doesn't work. She is not under fed at all- she has gained weight since we got her in September. We would prefer not to seperate her from us at night by putting her in another room so we are trying to figure out what's going on. We did try putting her crate in our room, but without being able to put a pad in it, she walks around and you hear her nails all night on the plastic crate floor.
Please help!
We need the dog whisperer!!
Sounds like my Molley, except
Sounds like my Molley, except the peeing part, not at this age. Molley has her own room too but with out the crate. Try doing this with the bed issue. Instead of putting the mat or bed inside the crate, put it tight next to the crate alone with what ever favorite toy, chew bone etc... alway have something on the mat/bed that he enjoys having and can't do with out. What we're doing here is to get your bully to understand that the mat/bed is his and only his. keep the mat/bed there till you see him play on it, laying down in it and rest in it, chew is toy in it etc. But also alway let him know that it's his bed/mat, like when your goona give him a treat, tell him to take it to his mat/bed, take it to the bed/mat yourself to help him understand what the bed/mat is. Once you see him doing all of these things on there and on his own when you tell him Take it to your bed/mat, wait alittle bit more ( 3 day to aweek)....Or until he get use to doing this like it's an often thing with him, just like what he does with coming into your room (an often thing). before moving his mat/bed. So now he's use to the mat/bed. Now we can try moving his mat/bed inside the crate. But it this doesn't work move it out to the same spot again for 3 day than move it in front of the enterence way instead of inside, wait there again, than try moving it inside again. This should work. It take a while but worth it in the end. I also forgot to tell you. "Important"...Don't let your bully pee during any of these steps. Yelp at him when ever you see him start wanting to pee on the mat/bed, (Yelp! any sudden loud sound) this is just to get his attention really fast inorder to help stop him in continuing to peeing. Don't yell at him to get his attention to stop peeing, that will just make things worst. Let him out once you get his attention to go do his thing. This would be also a good time to teach him the word pee and poop while you open the door to let him out. This is how I tought my Molley those words, she know pee and poop when ever I ask her to go, but she usually tells me first before I tell her to, Not in Words, haha.. but by just sitting at the door and yelping to get my attention. For the bed room issue, Molley did that too, she'd come into our room, sit next to our bed and start doing this soft growling as if she's whispering into one of our ears so not to wake us both up. She doesn't do this as much any more but when she does, its usually because she needs to go pee. I'll have to get back too you later on this "Coming into the Room Issue" and how I help Molley undertand that she just can't come into our room so late at night. She sleeps through the whole night now. But when she was just a yrs old, Man!... I had some sleepless nights, I think it was like taking care of a new born, I don't know about new borns. lol.... Molley's almost 4 now and life with her has gone much,.. much... some smoother for me, beacues she now can understands 2 languages. Thai and Eglish.
I hope I was of some kinda help on your bed wetting issue. Should you try this method, keep me posted on how it goes would you? Thanks.
Good Luck...
Aude and Molley
My ideas on this
1. Sounds to me like she has some separation anxiety. If she only pees when you're away, that suggests to me that she is anxious. As for the comfy bed thing, don't worry about that. My girl liked to snooze on the hardwood floor, lol!
She is a rescue and she probably has some "issues" from her past. Maybe with time, as her confidence in you increases, this will sort itself out.
2. Kind of same as above. Sounds to me like she wants more attention and has figured out that if she only does one thing at a time, you'll take her out twice. Clever girl, taining her parents :)
3. We went through this and ended up putting her outside our room. It was not a sustainable option to have her in with us because she wanted to play, eat, pee at all hours. Can you set up her bed just outside your room, but put a baby gate on your door? That way, she can see you and be "close" to you but not physically disturb you as much. This could be a good first transition. And then eventually, maybe move her even further from your room. I'd stop giving her water at 7:00 (that's what we did) to avoid the peeing thing. Again, she is training YOU :) (I'm not judging here because I was the worst, lol) The best thing we did was kick her out of our bed. Eventually she got used to it. With your rescue girl, you may have to do it in stages. Over time, she should get comfortable with it.