Kennel training and reversing bad habits

[Marauder]

Hello.

About 6 weeks ago I adopted a 6 month old female Schipperke. I work in a laundromat and a customer brought her in sitting on top of his laundry basket.

Daisy was his sisters dog, She moved and could not keep her so she gave her to her brother. He is not allowed pets and had been hiding her in his apartment for about a month. He said he was looking for a good home for her.

She is not housebroken and to make matters worse the man I got her from had been feeding her fried chicken skins for the month he had her. He was on a skinless chcken diet and fed her the skins.

So I also have bad habits to reverse as well as housebreaking.

I initially tried keeping her in the kitched with a baby gate but my cats would not or could not get past the dog to their food or litterbox.

I then tried keeping her in the bathroom behind the baby gate. This was working until she started to eat the drywall and she began messing in the bathtub even though I had been walking her every 2-3 hours.

So I now have her in a training kennell. I was told to get a small kennell just big enough for her to lie down in because larger kennels allow the dog to mess in one end and sleep in the other.

I still take her out every 2-3 hours. She does not mess in the kennel and can wait overnight but she wakes us to go out arount 5AM. Still that's 6-7 hours; not bad.

Their are several problems. First is the whining. She does not like the cage at all which I am told is required for kennel training.

Next is the nervous peeing. If I go near the cage to let her out she gets excited and squats and pees in the cage or just out of it. I believe she may have been abused by a man because she becomes very submissive and pees at the drop of a hat the second I go near her which makes me very nervous about disciplining her in any way. She will occasionally nervous pee when my wife takes her out but it's mostly with me. I have tried very hard not to raise my voice around her and I've never hit her. It is merely the sight of me, a man, putting his hand down to her to pet her or hold her. She seems fine when I hold her and actually prefers to be held by me rather than my wife.

I have been testing her. I will let her out to pee then keep her in the kitchen for a while and do obedience training with her. She will be fine for a while then just squat and pee or poop on the floor. This ends the training session of course. I show her the mess and say no firmly then put her out. I can no longer walk her though. We got 22 inches of snow last week and she only has 6 inch legs. The only clear spots in town are the roads, Most people do not shovel sidewalks. I snowplowed my yard so she has a place to run and play and do her business.

My question is am I doing this properly? I trained my first dog 10 years ago and he was housebroken in only a couple of weeks. He was not kennel trained we just used a babygate and kept him in the kitchen and let him out to the back yard. After a couple of weeks he was asking to go out at the door. But Daisy is locked in a kennel. she can't go to the door and ask to go out. What should I expect from her? How do I know when she is "trained" if she is locked up all the time? Everything I have read says she is to be restricted to the cage at all times except for pee breaks every 2-3 hours.

She is also a very alert dog and fascinated with people. When I was able to walk her she would very often forget what she was ouside to do because she saw someone get out of a car. Any sighting of a human or other dog/animal and her concentration is completely gone. She will ignore EVERYTHING and just sit and stare at people forever if allowed.

All this is making training very hard. I worked with a professional trainer with my first dog so I know most of the do's and don'ts but I have never had a dog that arrived with bad habits that needed breaking.

Housebreaking
Nervous peeing
chewing on hands (hopefully just a puppy thing)
easily distracted
dislike of kennel and associated whining when put in it
How do I discipline and train a dog that was abused without frightening her into submissiveness and peeing.

I do not want to delay obedience training any more than I have to. She had 6 months of no training already but I have to get her housebroken so that she can socialize. She is becoming more restless every day in the kennel. It has gotten to the point where we can't even hold her quietly or keep her on our laps. She is just too spastic and hyper. Before the kennel she would sleep on my lap for hours at a time.

Any advice or tips?

Howard

[JMM]

Instead of punishing her when she goes to the bathroom in the house, realize that you missed taking her out. When she's active, you may need to take her out more often. Just say uh oh and put her in her crate while you clean it up. No big deal.

Take her out on a leash and go with her for potty time. Praise her and give her a treat when she goes outside. She needs to be reinforced for a behavior to help increase the frequency of that behavior (the more she is treated for going outside, the more she will want to go outside).

Her craziness probably means she needs more exercise. Try increasing her walk time, do 2-3 short (5 minute) training sessions a day as mental exercise will help tire her out as well, play fetch inside, try some food toys like stuffed kongs or buster cube/food balls to entertain her. A tired dog is a good dog.

What has worked for my dogs nipping hands is to yelp when they do it and then ignore them for a few minutes.

You don't have to punish a dog to train it. You might want to look into positive reinforcement and clicker training. A basic obedience class that uses these methods would be a great start. Training with corrections does work for many dogs, but as you've noticed with this one, she doesn't respond well to that type of training. Obedience training will also help to increase her confidence.

[Marauder]

Thanks for the advice. The only punishment she has ever received from me is a stern "NO" when she has an accident followed immediately by being taken outside and shown where to go. We do praise her and give her a treat every time she does her business outside.

The problem seems to stem from whatever abuse she got from her previous owner. She does not mess or pee in her kennell but she does "nervous pee" anywhere from a few drops to an ounce or two.

She does this when I go to the kennell to take her out to pee. She is very exited to see me at first then as I get close the tail goes between the legs and the ears flatten and she pees. Sometimes she will go completely submissive and lay on her back and start peeing.

Another thing is when my wife takes her out. On the way in she will let the dog walk herself in. She usually gets a drink and then is put in the kennell. If she sees me she will run straight to me tail wagging furiously then curl up in a ball at my feet and pee.

Someone has obviously abused this dog in the past and I don't know how to get her stop being nervous around me.

How can I train a dog that is afraid of me?

When we are walking or playing in the yard she is all over me though. I can't understand how a dog can be so comfortable and happy around me, wanting me to hold her and play with her and then to be so afraid of me when I reach down to pet her or take her out of her kennell.

She has been in the kennell for about a month now and no improvement. I let her out the other day, she let me scratch her for a minute or two then ran like a bat out of hell to the living room, jumped on the couch; (where my wife was finishing the wrapping of Xmas gifts) then squatted and peed all over the couch and gifts then jumped down and ran to the back door to be let out. I just don't get it. She had been taken out to pee only 15 minutes earlier.



The whining is getting worse and she is becoming more exitable when you approach the cage which is bad as this can and does lead to exited peeing

I am going to take her for obedience training at petsmart but I really think she needs to be housebroken first. Take one step at a time as it were and housebreaking is step one.

[JMM]

I don't think you should put off training. Housetraining is just part of learning manners. I really think you should find a positive trainer outside of Petsmart to work with you individually as well as taking classes. She needs to gain confidence and feel secure. In the mean time, you can leash her to you when she is out of the kennel. I did this with Jonathan for a long time. He HAD to stay by me even if he didn't want to and it kept him from getting into trouble (peeing on the carpet). It has been almost 2 years since we seriously started behavior modification (a progressive program designed by an experience trainer using positive methods) with Jonathan. He is now excited and outgoing when I come in the house and comes into the bedroom at night to say goodnight and cuddle. That's a far cry from the dog that hid in the laundry room.


Jonathan today actually looking at me with his head held high. [/img]