Melinda Meahan - take out TRASH to reply wrote:

I don't think it's inconvenient to have to housebreak her, but if going
for a full-scale walk is the only time she will go potty outside the
house but it takes multiple walks every morning for her to go potty to
the point that I am spending the entire morning taking her for walks
every 5-15 minutes waiting for her to go (like that one web site said to
do) instead of working, yeah, *that* is inconvenient. But that would
probably be inconvenient for anybody whose life didn't revolve around
their dog.

I am generally a fairly laid-back person, and the tethering thing with
watching for her to show signs of having to go and then taking her out
when she does seems to be working reasonably well and fits my style
better than the "let them out for five minutes first thing in the
morning and give them five minutes, and if they don't go, stick them
right back in the crate and wait (anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour
depending on which web site it was) and then take them out for another 5
minutes, and repeat until they finally go, then they can have an hour or
two of free time in the house until you stick them back in their crate
again for a while" advice that seems to proliferate all over the web
when you Google for "housebreaking a dog" does. But I cannot punch a
clock and put a dog on a rigid Phileas-Fogg-type schedule that doesn't
vary even a minute in either direction. It just doesn't work for me. I
also do best with uncomplicated things. As far as difficult in the
sense of taking a lot of will power, persistence, whatever, I have no
problem with that.


I'm not sure if you saw my earlier post about cleaning with Nature's
Miracle, but that might help. There's something else that might help
that I don't see mentioned above. That's the assigned potty place.


If the tethering idea is working, stick with it. If you decide you like
the crate and schedule idea more, try this.


Choose a spot on your property that you want your dog to use as the
potty place. When you take your dog out on schedule, go straight to the
potty place. She gets 5 minutes. Whether she goes or not, she goes
back to the crate. That's better than the full walk or even the partial
walk. With the whole walk method, your dog has all the incentive not to
potty on the walk because it means she gets more walks.


Also, Matt mentioned a book on housetraining. Check it out. I haven't
seen it myself, but Matt's suggestions are always excellent.


--Lia