Housebroken puppy urinating in house...

Question
Hello, my Rat Terrier is nine months old and has been housebroken since she was five months old.  I crate trained her, and when I noticed she was doing well a month and a half ago, I started letting her out in one room during the day.  She was doing fine until she started going to the bathroom in the house during the day.  I then started to put her back in the crate.  The past two weeks she has been urinating and defecating in the house.  It seems like she doesn't even ring the bell I hung on the door to go outside and go to the bathroom anymore.  She ignores it (she used to use it all the time when she had to "go").  Just now, she urinated on the couch on a blanket! I have no idea what is going on and how to deal with this... Like I said before, she was housebroken for months without having an accident.  What should I do?!

Answer
Hi Jamie.  Without seeing the dog and it's training, and going from what you have written........here is what my advice is.   I think you made a good move when she initially started going in the house again, and you put her back in her crate.   For whatever reason, and I don't have enough info to dissect all the possible reasons, and it really doesn't matter because we want a solution......she started being unreliable again, and you put it back in place to monitor it.   As far as the bell thing goes.  Whatever you did to teach that, sounds like it was working fine, then the dog got sloppy.   Wait, let me rephrase that.......you LET the dog get sloppy.  The dog needs to ring that bell every time he goes out, so at some point in time, he wasn't ringing the bell, but was still getting out.  How would you remedy that?  Good question, and I knew you were going to ask it.  What you need to do is that anytime he goes out there now, you need to make him ring that bell, even if you have to take his paw and ring it for him.   He doesn't go out unless he rings it, and you will probably have to ring it for him again with his paw or whatever until he gets the hang of it again.   Also, there are no guarantees that this couldn't happen again, so  you are just going to have to be sure that he rings it when he goes out every time, and his bad habit will not have a chance to start again.  In fact, it's virtually impossible, and I'm sure you will be getting results again immediately.   You can do it!

Fred Hassen
http://www.sitmeanssit.com
Sit Means Sit Dog Training
Revolutionizing the World of Dog Training