boston terrior peeing

Question
I have a 15 month Boston.  Since we moved he pees in the house.  He gets taken outside with our other dog.  He could be out there for half an hour and in less than an hour he goes into one of the spare rooms and pees.  If you see him coming down the hall he is acting like he did something wrong.  How can I stop this?  He knows that it is wrong because he goes to his kennel.

Thanks,
Sandra

Answer

Hi Sandra,

It's possible your dog has a urinary tract infection which makes holding his urine uncomfortable.  If your dog isn't neutered, it could also be a prostate problem. It wouldn't be a bad idea to have a vet examine him to rule out a medical problem before resorting to other ways of fixing this problem.

By taking your dog outside with your other dog, do you mean you leash walk the dogs, or just let them outside by themselves? Left outside, you have no idea if your dog is eliminating or not. You should be leash walking the dog that's going in the house, until he relearns his house training. It's on a leashed walk that you can praise or reward him the moment he's done relieving himself outside. Let him know how much it pleases you!

Just it you may have done when your dog was a small puppy, if your dog isn't reliable inside your house, you shouldn't be giving him the unsupervised run of your home. If he hasn't done all that he needs to during a leashed walk, letting him have the run of your home after the walk is only setting him up for an accident to occur, because you know he still needs to "go"!
When you return from a walk that's only been partially successful, put your dog in his crate (if he's crate trained), or contain him to part of a room with a child gate or two, or you can use an indoor dog pen (like this one: http://www.petworldshop.com/pictures/pet-containment-pen.jpg). If you aren't crating your dog, place a thick layer of newspaper down over the entire containment area, so that clean-ups will be easy, should an accident occur.

Anytime you aren't able to supervise your one dog, he needs to either be crated, or put in a containment area. Some people find it helpful to keep the dog's leash on inside the house, and tie the other end of the leash to a belt loop.  This prevents the dog from slipping away to have an accident in the home.

The good thing is, because your dog isn't a small puppy, and has been successfully house trained once already, he'll relearn this lesson faster than the first time. He just needs a good brush up on the skills.

Clean the areas in your home where accidents have occurred with an enzymatic cleaner, such as Nature's Miracle or Simple Solution. This will help ensure your dog isn't remarking areas where he's gone to the bathroom in the past.

Best of luck,

Patti