I am a dog owner, help!

Well, I am now the new owner of a 7-yr.-old ShihTzu. His name is Jello and good grief, he is so extremely friendly. He is not leaving me alone!My kitties are literally looking at me with sad eyes and looking at Jello with murderous stares.
I thought I was taking care of him temporarily (the previous owner is renovating his house) but now I learned Jello is not wanted anymore.
Please I need some board magic to give me more patience (Jello is not housebroken) and more time for my 3 girls!
PS: Some advice will help too!
Thank you!

Good grief!

I hate people like that! So inconsiderate to take total advantage of your hospitality. I would take the dog and say good riddance to whatever friendship it is you have with these people. Let them know that what they did is wrong and you don't appreciate it but you will have to live with it.

I'm so sorry but it sounds like this poor puppy was severely neglected. 7 years old and not house broken?! Good Grief!

There are blue pads that you can buy that apparently encourage dogs to urinate on them. That's about the best advice I can give you. And bless your heart for being such a nice person. Please don't let this experience dampen your spirits from extending more niceness to others.

p.s. what a cute name!

I would just partition a part of your kitchen off and contain him with newspapers spread out for him to use. Once he gets the hang of using the newspapers, take the newspapers outside and he will understand what is needed.

I echo Tamme good grief 7 years old and NOT potty trained?

Wow i can't believe someone would just dump a dog like that

Shih tzu's are absolutely delightful loving little dogs. But i do warn you, they are notoriously hard to housetrain. This is not to say it can't be done, but it won't be easy, and at 7 yrs old the dog will be set in its habits.

Firstly are you sure Jello was not housetrained in his previous home? Sometimes upheaval in a new environment can totally mess up the dogs toilet habits and you'll have to start right from the beginning.

What i would do is start to retrain Jello as if he were a pup. This means take him out to the garden first thing, after play, eating and every half hour. Go out with him and make a big fuss and a little treat when he gets it right.
Personally i wouldn't go down the road of newspapers as you are telling the dog it is ok to defecate indoors and when you are moving the paper outside you are, in essence, having to retrain him again.
Also do not allow the dog any food outside his feeding times. That means leave the food down for say 15 minutes, if he hasn't eaten it, pick it up. This will stop him returning for a little nibble now and again, which would lead to constant irregular motions.
I followed this routine and i taught my 6 week old pup to be totally housebroken within the week. It's hard work, but it'll be worth it.
Good luck, enjoy the little shih tzu, your cats will forgive you in time, believe me
Would love pics??

A dog generally won't soil his sleeping area, so it may help to keep him confined to a pretty small area when you can't be watching him closely - even something like a roomy travel kennel will work. (Once he gets used to the idea of going to the bathroom outside, it should no longer be necessary.)

Here is a great site to learn how to crate train and answer any questions you might have.

http://www.scvhumane.org/behavior/dog/crate_train.htm

Good luck!

We're housebreaking 2 puppies right now and we rescued an adult dog that wasn't housebroken many years ago. We have them in puppy class and we're re-learning all kinds of tricks with housebreaking. Here are some that are working well for us:

I agree with the recommendation on crate training - please pursue that option!

Target sells puppy pads to help with housebreaking - they are about $7 for 30 pads. I keep one right by the back door for those times that they just can't hold it before I get them outside. At first I had to prime the pee pad with a little bit of urine from one of there mistakes but no longer have to do that.

Restrict the dog to tile floors only until you are confident that he is not going to mess elsewhere.

Until he is housebroken - there should be 3 places where the dog can be: his kennel (or a restricted kennel type room), outside with you, or in a room with you and constant supervision. Do not break this rule under any circumstance!

The minute the dog makes a mistake, immediately distract him and get him outside immediately. If you can't make it that far, at least get him to the pee pad.

Praise the heck out of the dog when he goes outside. Keep the praise words consistent like "good potty", or "good poop". By keeping your words consistent, you can often get them to "potty" on command as they learn what the word means. My puppies are already starting to potty on command.

Never, ever, ever rub the dogs nose in his mistake. Puppies have a memory of about 1.5 seconds - not sure what adults have. They won't remember what they did and you will only confuse them.

Be persistent - with an adult dog this can take months. When we rescued Ellie Mae as an adult, she was not housebroken. We worked with a trainer, and we finally had to resort to "diapers" for her. We used toddler training pants, cut a hole out for her tail, and put them on when she was in the house. She hated them so much that once we started this, she housebroke in about 2 weeks. We took them off of her when outside and after she peed. She figured out quickly that if she peed outside, the nasty thing would be removed for a while.

You can do this!!! Ellie Mae was the most stubborn dog that I've ever come across and we had success with her.

The pads are a good idea. We used them for Pearl, because she couldn't seem to make it through the night.

I've seen it recommended that you gradually move the pads closer and closer to the door, so that the dog gets used to the idea of going outside.

The crate works, too. Pearl is still a chewer and we have had to resort to crating her at night. This solved the potty and chewing problems and she puts herself to bed, each night.

Good luck, housebreaking a 7-year-old dog.

yes definately a crate will help.

Bailey has one where he goes at night and any other time during the day when no one can keep an eye on him. He won't go toilet in the crate and although it did take a while for him to get used to it, he loves it now. As soon as we put him in he settles down immediately to get some sleep.

Make sure you get the right size, too big and the dog will simply assign part of it as his own private toilet. So with a shih tzu it should be pretty small. There should be enough room for him to lie down and turn around in and stand up properly.

oh yes another thing is when he does go on the floor, don't use conventional cleaners such as bleach as the smell actually attracts them to go there again. Not sure what the homemade option is, but i buy the ready made urine and faeces odour remover. Some of these products on the market smell absolutely lovely! The one i used smells of banana and vanilla milkshake!!!