silkie housebreaking

Question
Hi Kristen,
Our family just adopted a male silky terrier.  His original owner passed away suddenly.  We were told that he is 3 years old and supposedly housebroken.  He is smart,loveable and truly a wonderful dog.  We've had him for 3 weeks now.  The first week he behaved beautifully. He was free to roam the house and never had an accident.  The second week we noticed he would urinate on the same armoire post daily.  After an uneventful 1 or 2 days, he now began urinating directly across, on my bed post.  He is now urinating on the hardwood floors, carpets, tile, walls, and even the garage floor, even though he has direct access outside. We are constantly taking him outside to go potty, but even then he will still urinate in the house usually when we're not watching.  We just got a crate and he is now placed in the crate during the day while we're at work and at night.
We love him tremendously, it's like he's been a member of our family forever.  My husband is at wits end, although.  What do we do?? He needs to learn to abide by our rules and urinating everywhere is not acceptable.

Answer
I am glad you got him a crate for when you cannot watch him, Shirley. It sounds as if he is settling in and now feels the need to mark the house as his own. You're right; this is not acceptible. Is he neutered? If not, having him neutered may help with the problem, in addition to crating him when you aren't there and/or able to watch him, and taking him outside IMMEDIATELY when you see him starting to potty in the house. Get some baby gates to keep him confined to the room you are in when you are home, so you can watch him; the more times he potties in the house, the harder it's going to be to housebreak him. When you take him outside to potty, always do it on leash so you can praise him as soon as he does potty out there, and also to ensure that he DOES, in fact, go.

I would recommend getting an enzymatic cleaner like Nature's Miracle to clean the areas that he's already pottied on in the house. It does a good job of eliminating all odor and trace, so he will be less likely to keep wanting to use the same spot inside over and over.

Kristen