Daisy's Mom
Well-known member
Daisy is doing pretty well on house training in general, and overall, we've been impressed with her on that since the day we brought her home. She's not quite 6 months old. However, she still has this thing where, if she can, she'll sneak off and poop on the floor in the living room when we aren't watching her. It's very frustrating. She does go to the door and even rings her little bell to go out at times, but if no one is in the room with her, she'll do it happily in the house. Even if I've had her out 10 minutes before and waited and waited on her to do her business.
I know we've become more relaxed about the constant supervision in recent weeks, and that has allowed this problem to develop. But the problem is that she is uncontainable in our house, except in her crate or in a small room with a solid door, like a bathroom or laundry room. I guess I could pop her into the laundry room and put a gate up in the doorway. What a pain to do every single time I need to walk out of the room for 30 seconds! I hate to put her into the crate each and every time I leave the room, even if it's just for a few minutes. She is in the crate while we are at work, and she goes in there very cheerfully with treats, but I don't want her to start to feel imprisoned in there. We just say "In crate," and she goes bounding in there and sits and waits for the treat she knows is coming. I've been so thrilled with her on that.
We have a very open floor plan downstairs, where the doorway openings are like 15-20 feet across, but we've jury-rigged a gate system (3 multi-section pieces that we put behind various pieces of furniture. Hideous and inconvenient for everyone else in the house as that is, it worked for a while at keeping her in the kitchen/family room area. That was a big factor in helping her house training. But now, she's such a leaper that she just leaps directly up onto the arm of the chair the gate is next to, and jumps down on the other side of the gate! She can literally leap vertically almost 3 feet! I don't know what to do. Although she (fortunately) doesn't know it, she could jump right over the gate directly.
I know everyone says use an X-pen, but there is literally no uncarpeted place in our house that would accommodate such a thing unless it's right directly in front of the front door. The gates we have look bad enough to anyone coming into our house, I'd hate to add even more clutter to it all with an x-pen we have to walk around.
It's kind of getting me down. I love her, but this is way harder than I ever dreamed. I guess I'll have to go back to Stage 1 where if I don't have her immediately with me, I put her in the crate. Bringing her with me from room to room is not easy either, because she will grab anything that isn't nailed down to chew on or run off with. So we would have to puppy-proof every room in the house. When I go into the office, there are boxes of papers on the floor, she immediately grabs something out and runs off. If I put her on my lap, she jumps onto the desk and starts walking around grabbing things. So you really can't get anything done but keep pulling her away from various things. And, to make matters worse, sometimes even when I'm in the room with her watching TV, she'll leap over the gate and do her business without me noticing. I think she may be half jack rabbit!
Any advice? At what age are they truly trustworthy? I dream of the day when we can leave her out of the crate when we're gone, but that seems about a million years away right now. Or at least give her the run of the house when we are at home! Right now, I'd be happy if I could go work on the computer for 5 minutes and not have a pile of poop in the living room when I come back! This has happened every day for the past week.
I know we've become more relaxed about the constant supervision in recent weeks, and that has allowed this problem to develop. But the problem is that she is uncontainable in our house, except in her crate or in a small room with a solid door, like a bathroom or laundry room. I guess I could pop her into the laundry room and put a gate up in the doorway. What a pain to do every single time I need to walk out of the room for 30 seconds! I hate to put her into the crate each and every time I leave the room, even if it's just for a few minutes. She is in the crate while we are at work, and she goes in there very cheerfully with treats, but I don't want her to start to feel imprisoned in there. We just say "In crate," and she goes bounding in there and sits and waits for the treat she knows is coming. I've been so thrilled with her on that.
We have a very open floor plan downstairs, where the doorway openings are like 15-20 feet across, but we've jury-rigged a gate system (3 multi-section pieces that we put behind various pieces of furniture. Hideous and inconvenient for everyone else in the house as that is, it worked for a while at keeping her in the kitchen/family room area. That was a big factor in helping her house training. But now, she's such a leaper that she just leaps directly up onto the arm of the chair the gate is next to, and jumps down on the other side of the gate! She can literally leap vertically almost 3 feet! I don't know what to do. Although she (fortunately) doesn't know it, she could jump right over the gate directly.
I know everyone says use an X-pen, but there is literally no uncarpeted place in our house that would accommodate such a thing unless it's right directly in front of the front door. The gates we have look bad enough to anyone coming into our house, I'd hate to add even more clutter to it all with an x-pen we have to walk around.
It's kind of getting me down. I love her, but this is way harder than I ever dreamed. I guess I'll have to go back to Stage 1 where if I don't have her immediately with me, I put her in the crate. Bringing her with me from room to room is not easy either, because she will grab anything that isn't nailed down to chew on or run off with. So we would have to puppy-proof every room in the house. When I go into the office, there are boxes of papers on the floor, she immediately grabs something out and runs off. If I put her on my lap, she jumps onto the desk and starts walking around grabbing things. So you really can't get anything done but keep pulling her away from various things. And, to make matters worse, sometimes even when I'm in the room with her watching TV, she'll leap over the gate and do her business without me noticing. I think she may be half jack rabbit!
Any advice? At what age are they truly trustworthy? I dream of the day when we can leave her out of the crate when we're gone, but that seems about a million years away right now. Or at least give her the run of the house when we are at home! Right now, I'd be happy if I could go work on the computer for 5 minutes and not have a pile of poop in the living room when I come back! This has happened every day for the past week.