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Housetraining help

Pam Smith

Active member
I have been home over the summer and the dogs schedule for eating and the bathroom is off. It hasn't been a problem since time wasn't a factor. Now I will be leaving at 7:00 and eating and potty have to happen quickly. I started feeding them around 6:00 to get them back on schedule and two of my dogs are doing fine but the third one isn't pottying and later I am finding poo accidents :yikes . He is a healthy three year old but he is reverting to the places he would sneak of to when he was a puppy. I have chemically treated these areas. My question, is there something you can feed the dogs that will make them go to the bathroom quickly. I use an all natural dry dog food and warm up a homemade low fat chicken broth to pour over it.
 
There's nothing you can feed to make them go quickly.

Why don't you switch to a once a day feeding in the evenings. There's no reason you need to feed in the morning. But you DO need to get them out to wee and poo before you leave them for the day. This probably means, as suggested, taking them for a walk, which probably means getting up earlier to make about 15 minutes to do this. I take mine for a walk first thing in the morning and they always all go. Wlaking is oen thing that does stimulate the bowel and should get them to go.
 
Taking them for a walk does work but I have to walk Rudy for 10 minutes separately because of his recent surgery and right now there isn't an extra minute in the morning, hubby is no help that early. Also with feeding once a day that is what my cavalier breeder suggested but the vet was not in agreement. Also both the shih tzus throw up yellow stuff if I miss a feeding and my female shih tzu has kidney disease and I am not sure if a once a day feeding would be okay for her. If someone knows the answer to the throwing up and the kidney issue, the once a day would certainly be an answer. Actually my dogs don't seem that interest in food in the morning; I have had to encourage them to eat at times.
 
I think it is believed better to feed twice a day for vomiting dogs if this is acid reflux related. I have started giving mine a mini-meal in the evenings as leo has problems with vomiting.

When they poop in the morning this isn;t due to feeding them or not feeding them -- it is due to getting their bowels working. So it has nothing to do with feeding in the morning or how quickly they digest the food -- it takes half a day or so for them to digest a meal. Feeding in the morning will however stimulate the bowel so you can get them to go. But nothing you can feed will make this happen faster.

The only option really is walking them first I think. An alternative may be to have someone take them out mid-day but if they don't clear their bowel in the morning, then you feed them, this could make them very uncomfortable or cause them to soil indoors. That's why I was suggesting they might be a lot more comfortable not being fed in the morning if you have no options.

Lots of people feed their dogs once daily (unitl recently I did this for over two years), and indeed dogs are well equipped to go a day or two with no food at all and I know of people who deliberately skip a day once or twice a week to simulate a more 'normal' feeding schedule (wild dogs eat a lot when its available, then eat nothing for days). Many cavalier breeders recommend feeding once daily as cavaliers are fed so little anyway, and feeding them twice leads people to add a bit extra to each meal and thus end up with an overweight dog.

I can understand the difficulty of trying to get Rudy and the others organised. Maybe it means that for a short while, until Rudy doesn't need the separate walk, someone will need to walk them all or get up a bit earlier to manage them all. It won;t be long before he is OK without the separate walk. :)
 
My cavaliers have to eat twice a day, or two of them throw up. I've had two other dogs in the past that were the same way!
 
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