| Re: Peeing in house again
First off make sure your little guy doesn't have any health issues, he may have some incontinence issues. If not one of the best ways I have found to correct this is to limit his freedom in the house so you can watch him every minute. If you can't supervise him constantly put him in his crate. Sometimes you may have to use a leash tied to your belt or waste, baby gates work well too, shut doors, etc. Get him on a schedule for going outside, feeding and watering, and no food or water after 6 or 7 at night. Put him in the crate when you go to bed and when you leave to go to work or anytime you can't supervise him. Being a smaller dog he made need to go out more often. A few minutes after he eats and every hour or so depending on how his body clock works. Encourage and tell him to go potty and praise him when he goes. If he doesn't go outside he may be waiting to go in the house. It is very important to supervise and to praise and reinforce the going outside. He will learn to go on cue, and he will tend to do his business first before going and doing dog things. If he doesn't go outside take him in and put him in the crate for 15 minutes and take him back out. If you want to give him free time outside on his own make sure he eliminates outside first, praise him and then let him have some free time. It is important to do this because he will not discriminate where he goes unless you teach him. Sometimes dogs choose their elimination spot whether it is inside or outside, they really don't care. They have no concept of how expensive the flooring or carpet is, the one thing they don't like is not to sleep and live near it. It really becomes a nightmare if a dog gets conditioned to laying in their own eliminations and beccome ok with that idea. That usually comes from people not the dog and is a completely different concept to discuss. Dogs learn mostly from repetition, so if you can make sure he doesn't go in the house and teach him that outside is the place to go and the more repititions he goes outside and you reinforce outside will help him to learn outside is the only place to eliminate. More than likely if he has chosen a spot in the house that is where he thinks he can go and is drawn there because of smell also. If you do not allow him in that particular room he may transfer to another room. That is the main reason to limiting his freedom. Everytime he gets the opportunity to eliminate in the house only reinforces his belief he can go in the house. It will also help build your leadership bond with him. It is true that you can't punish him after the fact. You only have a couple of seconds to catch and correct him. This is another reason to control his access around the house. Punishing him after the fact will only confuse him, he'll know that he is getting corrected but, won't understand why which could cause other problems. Try this for awhile and only give him more freedom as he shows improvement. It might take awhile depending on how long he has been doing this and how is temperament is. When he does go in the house and you can't catch him use a good odor remover on the spot he goes and follow up with a good repellant to help discourage him from sniffing and going on that spot again. Remember to stay calm, cool and collected. If he slips past you and sneaks back and eliminates in the house you need to supervise or limit his freedom more. I think that it is great that you picked up a dog from a shelter but, sometimes they need more work and patients dealing with problems like this. This may have been part of the reason he went to the shelter because he was hard to house break. | 
