[Jades_Mom]

I just adopted a 5 year old chinese crested. She came out of a puppy mill and had just had puppies. She inadvertently killed the puppies by trying to nest them in some dug up carpeting, laying on them and smothering them. Needless to say, she became useless to the breeder and was placed into rescue.

I do rescue myself and am somewhat baffled as to how to modify the behavior I'm about to describe to you. I'm assuming that this was started because she has lived her life in a small crate and is an effort on her part to keep her cage clean. She spins, backs up to the door and deficates. I, of course, want her to learn to live the 'good life' so I've been leaving her crate open while I'm at work (approx. 8 hours every day). She has access to my kitchen as well as potty pads. My kitchen is gated off for my fosters, but she has the kitchen to herself currently. Because she is used to pressing against something when she poops...if she's not in her crate, she will press up against a wall, cupboard, blinds, fencing...anything availale to poop against, leaving little 'poop dollops' everywhere (and it's a lot!). Since I can't be home all day with her, and 'thought' I'd prefer cleaning it up off the cupboards instead of her crate, I have left the crate open hoping she would learn to poop freely on the pads. So far, no such luck and cleaning poop off the vertical blinds and cupboards is probably more of a chore than cleaning it from her crate. Today, I went ahead and closed her crate and put a potty pad under the front of it, just in case.

I take her outside first thing in the morning, before I leave for work at 7 and again as soon as I get home...and several times after that. Because I have rescues, my dogs are never outside without being supervised, so I am always with her when she is outside. I will gently nudge her away from the wall when she's outside and decides she needs to relieve herself. But I obviously can't be with her all day if I'm going to continue to feed my rescue habit.. She is eating twice a day since she was in pretty poor shape when I got her about 3 weeks ago. She's not looking too poorly right now, so I'm thinking about cutting her morning feeding to l/2. She is HW positive and has been completely vetted/spayed/ etc at this point. We have not begun HW treatment and won't for until she's on preventative for about 6 months (she's 7 pounds so small and high risk) She's been through A LOT of transition in the last couple of weeks, and I'm not looking for a quick fix. This little girl is going to take a lot of time to learn that her worth goes far beyond how many puppies she can produce and I well know that and have the patience to stay with her for the long haul. I have never seen this behavior, as such before however, (and I've modified a lot of behaviors) so just would like to know if there's anyone out there that have any suggestions.

Thank you in advance from Molly and myself.

Jades Mom (and Molly's too!)