ORIGINAL MESSAGE:
by Graham

Our Salty is eight months old and is still not completely housetrained. We saw an animal behaviourist about her housetraining problems, and he said she may never be housetrained, so we are limiting her water. Other than that she is very well-behaved. She lets me blowdry her, brush her teeth, clean her ears, etc. with no problem and she comes and sits when told. Because she is still not completely housebroken, we only give her water three times a day (we live in Canada, so heat is not a problem!): at breakfast, at 5pm, and with supper. More often than not, at 5pm she will drink too fast and then spit up. I say spit up because it doesn't seem like vomit. Will she ever break this habit of drinking fast? Is it bad for her to keep spitting up or will she learn eventually to pace herself? Thanks for you advice!

DISCUSSION:

I am concerned about you restricting water, especially on an 8 month old puppy. I suspect that the reason Salty is gulping water is that she is desperately thirsty. She is regurgitating because she is taking it in too quickly.

Regardless of the training situation, she should have access to fresh water at all times. If she was urinating in the night, you might want to take her water away by 8 p.m. but this puppy must be able to hydrate herself at will. At 8 months of age, many puppies are not fully house trained. Your puppy is not urinating because it is drinking too much but because it has not yet figured out a way to tell you when it has to go. I don't know the history on this puppy but it may have been paper trained while it was young this past winter. Often, there is a period of confusion when you change from paper training to going outside. Please continue with your training and be PATIENT.

Your puppy is still a BABY and if you are consitent, it will get the message. I too come from Canada (Ottawa) and although our winters are very cold, our summers are blistering hot in most areas. Salty could experience a lot of problems this summer if you continnue to restrict her water intake. Good Luck !
-Andrea Noël Snoël Maltese

I agree with Andrea completely. You are risking kidney, bladder and liver problems by not giving her enough water. Take your dog to a trainer, if you cannot get her house trained. My GSD had to go, as we had no luck with him. He was 11 months old, and they had him trained in 3 weeks. Sometimes we have a communication problem with the dog, that they can solve.
-Marsha A.

I meant to add on my previous post : Did you check out Ellie's post on "Not housebroken @ 10 months". There were lots of tips that might help you with Salty.
-Andrea

I agree with the others. There is no reason that a dog cannot be housetrained. She is just not understanding what you want. Have you tried the crate method? I only used it when I could not be there to directly supervise Herald. When I saw him looking for a spot or even actually going I would make alot of noise and rush him outdoors as quickly as possible. He was completely trained at 4and a half months as was a little black poodle I had before him. No physical punishment, mind you, I would never do that, but she has to know that you don't like what she is doing. I would give her all the water she can drink and then just watch her, in fact the more water, the better.
-Ruth

Graham, When I got Lucy, she was 12 wk. I had her potty trained outdoors (in December, the year we had the blizzard here in D.C.) in 3 weeks. When I first brought her home I was told: I you can't see the dog, she should be in her crate. I wasn't big on the crate, though I used it when I had to be out and leave her home alone. However, I either had her on my lap or in my line of vision from the moment I brought her home. The minute she even looked like she might be thinking about using the floor I scooped her up and took her out. If she actually squatted, I yelled at the top of my lungs NO!, then scooped her up and took her out.

Sometimes she peed in my hand on the way out the door, but she ALWAYS finished up outside. If you need to crate her, read some of the posts in the archives. But the most important thing here is to keep her on a schedule and get her out before she uses the indoors. That is your responsibility. At 12 wk, I was told Lucy could hold it no more than 4 hr. I probably took her out much more often that that. She was on an absolute schedule of feeding times and walking times plus taken out whenever her body seemed to feel the need. She slept in the bed with me from day 1 and I probably got up 3 or 4 times in the night and took her out--after a night or two, she came up and licked at my face and whimpered when she needed to go. I know this sounds weird, but you are the parent and she is the baby. Your job is to make sure she can "do the right thing" just like for human children. I figured Lucy's job was to learn to let me know she needed to go and and mine was to get her there and help her to refrain from accidents. Give it a shot.
-cathy brown

I had the SAME DARN BLIZZARD that Cathy Brown had and I would go outside and shovel a path for Harlee Dee & Travis so they would have a place to "go". It was fairly easy training them to "go" outside, but it takes an abundant amount of patience. Travis is now 4 yrs old and Harlee will be 4 on June 6th, and one in a blue moon they will have an accident in the house. They ALWAYS have access to fresh, cool water 24/7. They now know that when mommy goes to work, that they're not going to be able to "go" until I get home, so they pace themselves. And also, there are occasions when Harlee drinks her water so furiously that she does spit up. But it's usually when she's excited that I've come home and that we'll be taking our walk soon, 9 times out of 10 she doesn't spit up. As for the training, my opinion is that a majority of your time should be spent with your dog, observing different behaviors, and in my case, constant walking outside to insure that they know this is where they "go". And on weekends, any time they let me know they want to go outside, I take them. I think they have ME trained.
-Karen Kalamaras

Hi,I agree with Cathy. Pepper was our first dog and I was totally unfamiliar with "potty training", but I followed the crate training instructions and Pepper was trained in 4 weeks. For the first week, I kept him in the crate most of the time. I took him to the bathroom first thing in the a.m--7:00a.m. He would have feeding and playtime for about 1/2 hr & then I would crate him while I did my work etc. I repeated this action every 2-3 hrs with his final bathroom run being at 11:00p.m.. His last feeding/water was between 7 & 8 p.m. Each week I would increase his playtime and by the 3rd week he was going to the front door to let me know when he needed to go out. By the 4th week I completely trusted him to be outside of the crate in respect to potty training. He has had minimal accidents since then. If I ever purchased another dog, I would use the same procedure again I found it very successful and made my life much easier.
-Lydia/Pepper