4 year old beagle house training problems

Question
I see many posts on here regarding older Beagles and not getting them housetrained, you have provided the house training technic to try which I will one weekend I am able to be here 24/7 :).

My beagle is a four year old spayed female we have had since she was 6 weeks old.  She is the sweetest little dog but has the potty problem first of all.  During the day when we are home and in the evening she is real good about notifiying us when she needs to go out and do her business.  I will take her out as soon as we get up in the morning and then before I leave for work.  Some days I come home from work and she has gone to the bathroom in the house...other days she is really good.  She also gets us up throughout the night at least twice sometimes three times a day leaving us with not so on good night of sleep :(

we would like to get her to stop the going to the bathroom at night as but mostly the going in the house.

Like I said I will try this house training technique that you have posted for most potty training problems, but can you tell me ..is this something that I am going to have to keep repeating?  I work Monday thru Friday but can definitely put forth Friday evening to Monday morning.  Just curious to hear how it has worked for others.

my next question, how do  we get our beagle out of our bed?   she sleeps between us every night and we have tried to get her out of our bed into a kennel or her own little pillow/bed next to ours but it doesnt work...she wants to be with us.  Any suggestions?  

We think she has a little separation anxiety thing going on, doesnt like to alone or away from us, hates being in her kennel....makes her self so sick end up taking her to the vet to get medication to clear up her upset tummy issues.

any suggestions would help, I am all for trying things to make it better here with our little four legged furry daughter  :)

Answer
HI thanks for writing to me.... let it be repeated...... Rome was not built in a day. Meaning it has taken 4 years to build up to her current routines and behaviors, it is not going to that long to undue them but it certainly will take some time.
Before you try anything you must be sure that your dog has no medical issues and if she hasnt seen a vet in a long time I would take her for a check up to make sure there are no bladder or bowel issues.
Then as far as the housetraining, please do the weekend thing and see how it goes but let me warn you it must be followed to the letter and as I said it isnt perfect, she may have some accidents for a while. and you cannot slack on it. At ALL....

There are so many things that play a part in all this. For instance, If your dog is having a bowel movement more than 3-4 times a day that is a lot. That may be a sign of them eating a low quality food with a lot of fillers or grains. Dogs who eat high protein, grain free food poop about 1-2 times a day. Their poop is well formed and they digest most of the important stuff so there is less to come out. You may need to look at the food in other words.
A dog that gets up several times in the night to go to the bathroom is also not typical unless they are very old. You didnt specify if it was pee or poop but neither one is normal for a 4 year old dog. A four year old dog should be able to hold either for 10-12 hours if they really had to (not suggesting this is ok though to do to them unless a emergency) But my point is that your dog seems to go to the bathroom a lot. And she is a female so it isnt even about marking or dominance. So then you think about water consumption. Of course there should always be fresh water available but if she is having to pee at night then I would be taking the bowl up at least and hour or two before when you go to bed and take her out for the last time for the night. That being said when well trained, even my 17 month old pit bull female cfan drink a ton of water before going to bed and holds it for 7-9 hours without an issue until we get up and go out in the morning. So your dog has learned to go to the bathroom often as she was allowed to do so. Hence you are going to retrain her AND her bladder/bowels.

Ok the sleeping in bed, well, first issue is that you apparently let her take over the bed. All of mine know if I say get off they better get off and if they wont I will take them off and as many times as it will take and show my ALPHA dominance, but if you establish this they don't challenge you, Dogs dont want to be in charge, they just know someone needs to be. So you have to think.... who is in charge of YOUR bed? sounds like it is her.... so you need to start with putting her dog bed next to yours putting her in it and telling her to stay and then everytime she jumps on the bed you tell her no and put her back, it will be exhausting and she will be relentless for a while but eventually she will get it. So here's the thing though, in my opinion only, there are trainers out there that will tell you that if you are the ALPHA (in charge) then you should be able to "invite" the dog up when you want and tell it no when you want. Sounds like it makes sense but I find that it is confusing for them. In my estimation my dogs understand that being on the bed is ok, and I will even on rare occasion find one lying on the bed when no one else is in there but 95% of the time my dogs follow me to every single room and place I am in because I AM IN CHARGE. I work from home during the day and they are in my office all day with me, in dog beds, occasionally going outside on their own (doggie door) or one might lay on the couch in another room because it is cooler in that room, if I go in the bedroom they follow me there too and will jump on the bed or the couch I have in there and so on, they want to be where I am and they are centered on me leading the way. So if I say get down they get down. This is all from training them to do so. My choice has been that I allow them ont he bed or furniture as long as they do what I tell them when I tell them.
Everyone's preference is different but if you have allowed her to be in the bed and didnt teach her in addition to that it is ok until I say it isnt then she isnt going to want to get off. If she has sep anxiety (which is usually caused by us humans) then it is going to be even harder to banish her to another room at this point, that mnight come eventually. I think you will have to just start as I said with putting the bed there and just keep removing her every single time and doing it a million times until she gets it, and there can never be one single slip up or oh its ok on your part becuase it will onfuse her and ruin everything you worked on. In the beginning you may even wake up and find her in the bed later and then you will have to do it again but eventually she will get the idea. The other thing is trying to find her a bed that is so enticing she wont care.... One of my dogs is absolutely infatuated with really soft furry kind of stuff and I found a bed like that which is what I use to get her to adapt to going in the crate if I have to leave for more than 4 hours. She also loves to lay on the floor on top of dirty sheets (when I am changing them) or on top of my or my son's dirty laundry so I have capatilized on that and used it when she was small and I wanted her on the floor or in a certain spot. I am sure your girl has her facorites too you could capitalized on.

I hope this all is helpful, I try hard to explain things instead of just telling people how and what to do, I think inherantly you know what to do, you just need to be willing to do it a thousand times,and put in the time. Most people give in and nothing changes. If you are willing to put the work in for both of these subjects it WILL work.... good luck!  Have4Paws