"It's a Dachshund Thing"

[Sekah]

Mega is almost 8, and she came to live with me about a year ago. At that point she was vaguely acquainted with the idea of peeing/pooing outside, but she was by no means reliable. She'd been allowed to wander off to pee and poo in remote areas of her past home and on pads for years.

When she came to live with me she was kept gated or crated when not directly under my supervision, and was taken out on leashed walks every few hours (we don't have a yard, so can't just let the dogs out back). I got to know her voiding habits and wouldn't return to the home until she peed according to her schedule even if she was shivering to get back into the house. I think I slipped up and we had 2-3 accidents in the first few months, but since then she's been problem free. I tend to subscribe to the belief that a dog cannot be considered housebroken and be provided freedom until it has gone a full month with zero accidents. If a dog has an accident on day 20, reset that clock and start counting a full month again.

I hear a lot of small dog owners comment that their tinydogs "forget" their housetraining when the weather gets cold/wet. From what I've seen, those leashed walks help loads to stop dogs from reverting back to bad habits.

Granted Chihuahua =| Dachshund, but that's my tinydog housebreaking story.

 

[milos_mommy]

I've known....IDK, maybe 8 or 9 doxies.

All were housebroken except for one, and this one was a hoarding case who lived with about 7 or 8 also not-housebroken maltese (who were each about 1 or 2 lbs....so that could have had something to do with it )

Some of them do go on wee-wee pads, but those are dogs belonging to families who don't have fenced yards or lived in apartments...and I consider that housebroken. I don't know that any of them were particularly hard to house train, either.

 

[~Dixie's_Mom~]

Chloe is one of the best house trained dogs I've ever had! She has very occasional accidents and when she does it's always because I have forgotten to take her out before bed. And she gets REALLY upset when she has accidents and will look at me with her ears back and a depressed look on her face! I have never even scolded her for going potty inside, cause that face is SO sad! She is mortified if she has an accident.

(Violet is the best, she hasn't had an accident since she was about 8 or 9 weeks old besides when she got REALLY bad diarrhea and she was completely unable to hold it).