Boston Terrier - Vomiting, Eating Poop, Potty Training

Question
We recently rescued a 10 month old housetraining from an EXTREMELY bad situation.  When we found him, he was in a kennel full of his own feces, the worst case of flee infestation my vet had ever seen, and he had a puncture wound to his eye.  We have fixed all of those problems, but he is proving a real challenge to train.  He is wonderfully sweet, great with my children, and he and our 5 year old boxer LOVE each other.  Here's the problem:  He has a habit of eating poop and then coming inside and vomiting it back up --so frequently, it's exasperating.  Also, since winter has hit, he is on again off again with the housetraing.  I am a stay at home mom, so he has the opportunity to go in and out of the house at a whim. I have to get the throwing poop up and peeing in the house to stop for both my sanity and hygiene reasons.  Any suggestions?

Answer
Joey -

No problem at all with the typo.. I got the jist of it and it just emphasized the issue with house training.

The bottom line on poop eating is that it simply cannot be fixed in 90% of the cases.  It is a feral response of some sort that cannot be reliably gotten rid of. Some rare dogs will do well with some of the products sold in pet stores like Forbid, but very few.

The only way to resolve it is to either take him out on a leash or to pick up the poop from the yard on a regular basis.  Picking it up has another benefit in that it prevents your yard from becoming infested with parasitic worms.  I pick my yard every day since I too, have a poop eater. I have talked to dozens of trainers and behaviorists, and none of them claim success on this issue.

As to the house training, since he is partially trained, I would send him out on a regular schedule.  I suspect he just doesn't want to go out in the weather, so he doesn't ask. But if you send him out anyway, I believe he will do his business.

Please use a good product for cleaning in your house - it can help break the pottying cycle, and dogs can smell things we cannot. I recommend a product called Get Serious for cleaning.

If he hasn't been back to the vet recently, you may want to have him rechecked for worms too.

If sending him out on an hourly or 2 hour schedule does not resolve the pottying problems, let me know and I can give you the full story about how I housetrain rescue dogs.

Best wishes

-Beth