Toilet Trained At Home But Not Out.

[Guest RosieFT]

Rosie is 7.5months old and has been 110% toilet trained for a couple of months (if not more) at home but when at my parents' house, she has toileted inside on a couple of occasions. Now I ensured she knew where to go and how to get there and observed her going in the correct place on a few occasions, and I also walk her before I enter my parents' house to make sure she has toileted before we go in.

So, just because a dog is housetrained at your own home, does that not mean they are completely reliable elsewhere? Obviously, you would have to show them where to go once or twice.

The only mitigating factor is my parents' have a 15month old bichon that still sometimes toilets inside and I wonder if Rosie is using these old smells as the cue?!?!

I will have to shadow her next time we go (like i did when she was a young, unhousetrained puppy) but it is a bit frustrating when i know she has just been outside and then she comes into the house and does it.

Any thoughts?

[Dory the Doted One]

The old smells from your parents dog doesn't help.

If she were mine, I would treat her as if I was still training her from scratch. So I'd be watching her like a hawk and if she is making the moves I would take her outside and wait with her until I've seen her go before letting her back in.

I would be doing this whenever I visited new places with her.

Dory is a lot older than that, and I still did this with her until I was positive she knew where to go and she had been a couple of times without my assistance.

[poodlefan]

You'll find this with a lot of training.. you start with a behaviour that's particularised to one place and then you need to work to ensure that it becomes generalised.

Recalls are an example. Getting puppy to come is established in your back yard but you can't take it for granted and need to work on training it elsewhere.

The presence of urine or faeces smells in the new place wouldn't be helping but I'd suggest you use normal "not reliably toilet trained" vigilance in new placaes.

[Her Majesty Dogmad]

I adopted a great little dog 7 years ago, she was already housetrained. Her only vice was that I ended up not being able to take her to friends' houses because she would piddle every time, even if they didn't have another dog. It was like a territory marking and she could be toiletted just before we went in and would still go.

Also, as already said, some dogs can have accidents when they go into another house or will mark where another dog has been. Maybe try taking her to someone else's house where they don't have a dog and see what happens.

[Leema]

My older dog, "Mac", has not generalised toilet training. He needs to be watched in any new place and 'retrained' as such.

Clover has - she was busting last time we went to the vets to go outside! (I didn't realise .)

[Guest RosieFT]

Thanks for your input :-) . I am hopefully placing her with a friend for 5 days while we go over East in January (long way away) as long as she gets along with the resident dogs and am worrying about the housetraining now! I will have to test her out at another house and watch her more closely at mum's.