help with the new guy!

[femke]

well we got our new sheltie We named him laddie. We got him from a rescue organisation. He's such a good boy, great temperament from what I can see so far. He gets along great with Penny although I can definately tell that he hasn't been fixed yet. Being quite the " male" around her lol. He's got an appointment to get fixed on the 24th.

Now we just got him today and I can already tell he hasn't been trained at all. He's pee'd inside the house twice already. And it really just seems like a marking his house kinda thing. I'm just not sure how to go about training him... We are going to try to confine him to a smaller place of the house (kitchen) We crate trained penny when she was a little pup but Laddie seems quite scared of the crate to be honest. We can't really get him in there and don't want to force him right now seeing as that he just got here and everything.

Could the peeing just be stress? Would fixing him help at all? I'm gonna keep my eye on him for the next couple of days but hubby and I both work during the morning/part of the afternoon so he'll have to stay in the kitchen for those parts of the days.

Is it much harder to train an older dog than a pup? Penny picked up on her " sit" " stay" " down" so fast... Just looking for some tips I guess. Will keep you guys updated!

 

[Herschel]

Older dogs are probably a little bit more challenging to train than puppies, but I don't think it is going to be overwhelming.

Make the crate a very appealing place for him! Put a blanket in there, toys, and use treats to get him to go in and then give him a lot of praise for being in there. The crate should be a comfortable place--never, ever a "time out" place or punishment.

The peeing could be stress, marking, or just him not being house trained. I'll follow this post with my potty training tips.

 

[Herschel]

This was written in another thread in reference to puppies, but I would follow the same routine with an adult dog.

Potty training:

Keep a log book. Write down every time he goes #1, #2, eats anything, or takes a walk. Once you establish a schedule, any accidents that he has are completely your fault--meaning that if he pees in the house the only one that should get spanked is you.

Also, keep him confined to a smaller area. You should be able to supervise him at all times. We started out by confining our little guy to his crate (1 week), then the kitchen (3 weeks), and now he gets the kitchen and some of the family room. He sleeps anywhere (and everywhere) in that area during the day so he has no desire to eliminate in it.

We house trained our small-breed puppy in just over a month--and he is only 3 and 1/2 months old now. We kept a schedule and made sure that every 30 minutes we would say, "Herschel, do you have to go out?" and run towards the stairs. He would follow us and we would run down the stairs and let him out. He would usually get the point and go to the bathroom and receive tons of praise, chest rubbing, and treats. Yes--there were times when he acted like he didn't have to go, came back inside and peed, but we just cleaned up the mess and tried again 20 minutes later.

One thing that we were fairly determined about was treating our little guy like he is a big guy. We made a conscious effort to let him run down the stairs and outside on his own. We had him going up stairs by the second day of having him (8 weeks old) and down by the third. If you have stairs, make sure your puppy learns to go up and down them (tons of praise + treats), or if you're just opening up a door then make sure your puppy runs outside on his own to go to the bathroom.