sporatic peeing and pooping in house

Question
I have an adult boston terrier (who was a stray, so we don't know of his history) who is basically house trained. He will whine or go to the door to alert us that he needs to go potty. However, he goes through phases where is will pee or poop on the floor without us even knowing he has done it. He does this while we are at home. While we are gone, we put him in an appropriately sized crate, and he almost always pees in there (whether we are gone 2 hours or 5 hours). What he has been doing recently is when I go in the other room to put our 10 month old baby (this was going on even before we had the baby) down for a nap, sometimes I will come back in the living room to find poop on the floor, even if I have only been in there for a few minutes. Just this morning, my husband and I were both in the kitchen and the dog was eating, and I just happened to notice that there was pee on the floor. Neither of us knew when he did it, although we were positive that it had happened recently. This is all with no notice that he needs to go outside. We are at our wits end just with his going on the floor, but we are also getting ready to move into a new house, and I will not have him going on the floors. I will take him to the pound first. Any ideas?

Answer
The first thing I would do would be to have a vet check him out to rule out any potential health issues that could be causing his accidents.

If he checks out okay, I would recommend that you treat him as if he were not housebroken. When he's out of his crate, he should be attached to you with a 6-8 foot lead. This will allow you to immediately catch him if he starts to go, and get him outside. Keeping him tethered to you will keep him from sneaking off and pottying out of your sight, and it will also help you keep an eye on him.

If you're unwilling to do this, then use baby gates to keep him confined to the room you're in, again so you can keep an eye on him. Let him drag a 4-6 foot leash when loose in the house so that if you go to another room, you can take him with you, and quickly get him outside if you need to.

When you're gone, crate him like you have been doing. I'm concerned that the crate you're using might be too large, though, if he's pottying in it. It should be just big enough to let him stand, turn around, and lie down in. The dimensions should be no larger than 32 x 22 x 23 inches.