Dog pooping in the living room in the middle of the night (train, diarrhea)
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You should. A crate should be a comfortable safe place for a puppy and will allow you to keep your door open. If you make it his "den", he will enjoy going in it.
Restrict his night movement somehow, either by closing your room, or crating or tethering at night, until he's more mature or breaks this habit.
Our big dog also sleeps on a dog bed in our room but would sometimes wander at night and get into things, so we tethered her to a bed post at night for awhile. Not needed any more, she learned to sleep through the night.
Not true. With regularly scheduled meals and no other snacking; you can pretty much tell when. sounds like you need to feed dinner earlier in the evening and when you go out for the last time, you need to stay out until he goes.
Exactly. Our 4 dogs get fed twice daily. Once at 6am and the other at 6pm. I can set my watch to when they evacuate (which, btw, comes in handy when you need to collect a stool sample .
I've had a few dogs that would poop in the house particularly younger dogs and we would start the regimen all over again from scratch which included being crated again at night. PITA but it worked for us.
I can respect the opinion of lights and eye issues, but it is far more common to have an issue with general potty training than an eye issue. If a dog is afraid to go out at night by themselves, then I would work on the regimen including feeding schedules to avoid the urge to evacuate at night.
Of course we crate trained our dogs and would not let them have the option of leaving the crate door open until well past puppy destructo stage. That helps to avoid messing the house at night unless they are sick.
As I already said, we don't use a crate. As long as we keep the bedroom door shut at night, he's fine until morning. He never poops in the bedroom and just goes outside and does it in the morning.
Another option during training is to get a dog/baby gate for the bedroom door. Lots of options that are quick and simple to use.
Exactly. Our 4 dogs get fed twice daily. Once at 6am and the other at 6pm. I can set my watch to when they evacuate (which, btw, comes in handy when you need to collect a stool sample .
I've had a few dogs that would poop in the house particularly younger dogs and we would start the regimen all over again from scratch which included being crated again at night. PITA but it worked for us.
I can respect the opinion of lights and eye issues, but it is far more common to have an issue with general potty training than an eye issue. If a dog is afraid to go out at night by themselves, then I would work on the regimen including feeding schedules to avoid the urge to evacuate at night.
Of course we crate trained our dogs and would not let them have the option of leaving the crate door open until well past puppy destructo stage. That helps to avoid messing the house at night unless they are sick.
I honestly don't understand what the advantage would be in crating him over just locking him in the bedroom with us at night. He is not at all destructive (e.g. in terms of chewing stuff in the bedroom), so all that it amounts to is that he just has a little bit more room to move around in. By the way, we feed our dogs at roughly 8AM and 5PM. I can't see feeding them any earlier in the evening than I already do. I generally turn in by 10PM but my husband stays up later and takes him out before he goes to bed. One or the other of us is usually up by 7AM or so. If he poops in the living room, it's probably sometime between midnight and 6AM. He's a pretty light sleeper, too. I think he'd sleep through the night if my husband weren't getting up and going to the bathroom himself in the middle of the night.
I honestly don't understand what the advantage would be in crating him over just locking him in the bedroom with us at night. He is not at all destructive (e.g. in terms of chewing stuff in the bedroom), so all that it amounts to is that he just has a little bit more room to move around in. By the way, we feed our dogs at roughly 8AM and 5PM. I can't see feeding them any earlier in the evening than I already do. I generally turn in by 10PM but my husband stays up later and takes him out before he goes to bed. One or the other of us is usually up by 7AM or so. If he poops in the living room, it's probably sometime between midnight and 6AM. He's a pretty light sleeper, too. I think he'd sleep through the night if my husband weren't getting up and going to the bathroom himself in the middle of the night.
The crate is just how we do things, so sure- keep the dog in your room. Just relaying what worked for us with about 12 dogs over 30+ years.
We feed about 12 hours apart, you're feeding 9 hours apart. When your husband takes him out for the last 'go' is the dog pooping? Generally speaking dogs will evacuate about 8-12 hours after eating. So a final meal at 5pm would be anywhere between 1a.m and 5a.m. Since dogs generally won't poop where they sleep, he may have the urge to poop but he won't- he's in his den in your room. BUT given the opportunity to leave his sleep spot he may have the urge and will poop in the middle of the night elsewhere.
Quote:
How Long After Eating Does a Dog Poop?
Most dogs will poop about 30 minutes after eating, or immediately after waking up. These are both great times to plan walks or exercise for your dog. Of course, all dogs have different schedules, so you’ll learn what works best for your dog.
For most dogs, it takes between 8-12 hours for a meal to be fully digested, with puppies digesting food faster than older dogs. If your dog eats a smaller meal, they’ll digest it faster than a larger meal, also. So if you’re feeding your dog two meals a day, they are likely going to have to defecate about twice per day.
If it were us- We'd first try adjusting feeding schedules to see if it changes. You could go to once a day, stay at 2 times a day or even 3 times a day. But that's us.
We've only had him for 3 weeks, and I think his prior owner only had him for 3 months.
The normal "Rescue Dog Timeframe" is 3 days / 3 weeks / 3 months.
3 days of feeling overwhelmed and nervous
3 weeks of settling in
3 months of building trust and bonding with you
Stuff comes out of these dogs (I mean mentally) that don't show up right away. With the fact this dog was surrendered at 3 months by his last "owner", you might as well double that timeline, because he has lost trust.
Please consider crating him during the night. They do so much better when they have a "cave" to go to.
Yes, dogs can be afraid of the dark. He’s a puppy, just a baby & hasn’t been with you for long.
The easiest way to solve this is to accompany him outside at night. One of my rescues became afraid to go out at night when we had a coyote pack on the property & now we always have to go out with her, even though the pack is gone (for now).
Yes, dogs can be afraid of the dark. He’s a puppy, just a baby & hasn’t been with you for long.
The easiest way to solve this is to accompany him outside at night. One of my rescues became afraid to go out at night when we had a coyote pack on the property & now we always have to go out with her, even though the pack is gone (for now).
Yeah, my husband (the sweetheart) does that, but it's going to be more difficult once we start getting huge snowstorms as we generally do in December. He always shovels an area for the dogs to go, though, even if he can't follow them as far out into the yard as he'd like to be able to.
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