Why is he using the bathroom inside of the house? Need help!!

A few questions that came to mind:

Is he marking or peeing?
Could one of the cats have smacked him when he rang the bell to go out?
Is he still signaling he needs to go out, or just pottying in the house?

I suggest investing in a belly band. Marty, my foster dog, marks in the house. Once in awhile he slips up & marks...otherwise he's been good. I've been using an ace bandage wrapped around his belly so he cannot mark.

Crating him is a great idea, you'll have to start over again with housetraining.

My bet is that the stress of the holidays set him off. Eliminating in the house is a common stress reaction, & there are lots of surrendered animals for not being housetrained right after the holidays.

My mom's dog did that!!!!!! It almost sounds like the same story. He was around 7-8 years old, housebroken for years, not health problems.... He had been fixed since he was around 1 and it was right before Christmas that he started doing that!!!!

It ended up being a behavioral thing and we are thinking it was because he was upset with us for some reason Who really knows. We ended up just re-housebreaking him. It was easy enough, but it took some time. Maybe it's some sort of mid-life crisis

That's my only advice/opinion I have. Maybe get on a dog forum and see if you can find anything similar to your problem.

The smells and stress of the Holidays can trigger this type of reaction.

Crating is a great idea, though my son's dog will pee in her crate at times. She does fine when she stays with us, so I tend to think it as a too long in the crate issue.

Anothr thought is the tether Whiskey to you when you are home. I hook the leash through the loops on my belt and attach it to the collar. The idea is that the dog stays with you and you can notice the early signs that they need to go out. It's also extra attention and limiting their ability to pee in other parts of the house.

Hang in there.

I agree restart the crating and housebreaking again... also if you can get some comfort zone ( like feliway only for dogs)

Originally Posted by sharky

I agree restart the crating and housebreaking again... also if you can get some comfort zone ( like feliway only for dogs)

Click to expand...

I agree. Sounds like he is marking and going in the house both. He is acting like an untrained puppy and needs to be treated as such. Re-house train him, put up baby gates so you can supervise him when inside, don't give him the chance to mark/or use bathroom in the house -even leash him to you if that doesn't work, use a crate and 100% supervision. Good luck!

we are having the same problem with dixie, she did realy good at first but now seams to have a problem and wont do her business outside, well i take part of that back, she wont pee outside. i just dont get it, but we are trying the leashing her to us thing and it seams to be helping, btw how did you get her to ring the bells to go out?

Thankyou for the response/ideas everyone I really appreciate it. I crated him while i was at work yesterday and he didn't have any accidents so that seems to help. However when i went to bed last night i didn't crate him (never have before). He must have peed on the Christmas tree/carpet while i was sleeping because there was a stain when i woke up this morning. So from now on he will be crated at all times while he is unsupervised (even at night). I hate to do that -but it is the best way i can think of to help retrain him and get him going outside only again. Colin's been out of town (won't be back until tomorrow) but i told him what was going on- and we're both committed to working with him as much as we can so he relearns what's acceptable. So far we're planning to re-housebreak him.

Originally Posted by blondrebel76

we are having the same problem with dixie, she did realy good at first but now seams to have a problem and wont do her business outside, well i take part of that back, she wont pee outside. i just dont get it, but we are trying the leashing her to us thing and it seams to be helping, btw how did you get her to ring the bells to go out?

Click to expand...

Something i picked up in "The Loved Dog" - i trained both dogs to sit, then once they got that down i trained them to give me 5 - so then i worked with them on sitting by the door and high 5'in the string of bells (they got tons of positive praise/rewards everytime they did it) and they soon learned to ring the bell when they needed to go out. Only now Whiskey is having some issues, so it's not working to great for him- but it works wonders with our Aussie, Fosters- he's never had an accident in the house.