house training a 6 yr. old dog

Question
I recently adopted a 6 year old English Bulldog.  The woman that had him before used to leave the house for up to 12 hrs. at a time.  SHe left towels on the floor for him to use as a toilet.  Soo.. our dog does not pee in the house and knows to pee outside, however, if he's left with a bed or towel or blanket overnight to sleep on then he will pee on that.  We have a puppy and crate train him so I decided to take the new dog's bed and use gates to make a crate since it works so well for the puppy.  The new dog still urinated on his bed and then slept right on top of it.  This isn't a huge fluffy bed that absorbs everything, either.  The dog was sleeping right in a puddle of urine.  I've taken away everything soft the past few nights and used the bottom of the puppy's crate as his spot to sleep, in case he urinated on the floor, and confined him to just this area.  He's made it every night but not without barking because he does not have something soft to sleep on.  I'm actually a behavior analyst so figured I'd come up with some idea but I'm lost. I don't like depriving the dog of a soft comfortable place to sleep at night but do not know how else to handle this. Help!

Answer
Heather,
I have a few ideas for you to try.Yes! Good choice to remove the towels or bedding at this point, he will be ok without sleeping on something soft. He must be confused about why he can not use them to relieve himself when he did before.I would go back to basic puppy housebreaking rules with him. Take him outside to go PRAISE and reward when the deed is done outside.You can also take a urine soaked towel he has gone on and place it OUTSIDE this will let him know that is the place, then remove the towel, he should continue to use same spot.Remember to PRAISE and REWARD(with a tiny treat if possible).

Barking in the crate, that will be simple for you to fix.Get an empty soda can or plastic water bottle with top saved. If using can you will need to use strapping tape to cover the opening after putting in about 16 or so pennies. The sound that this makes will stop the dog of their actions so you can correct him. So lets say he is barking shake the can hard, he stops barking say NO BARK! repeat if need, he will stop the barking!

Hope this was able to help, let me know the progress on him.

 Lorie