Article From SubmitYOURArticle.com: Dog Training: House Soiling in an Adult Dog

Discovering that your older, mature dog is
housesoiling in your home can be frustrating for
many dog owners. After eliminating any medical
causes, you must take a look at other reasons for
this behavior.

If your dog has become anxious, this can cause
housesoiling in a mature dog. Let's look at how
this can come about.

Once your dog is six months or older you both
begin to develop a certain confidence with each
other regarding housetraining. Or, at least you
think so. As your puppy passes the age of 6
months and is feeling confident in his sense of
place, you are confident that you've done a great
job of housetraining him as a young puppy. In
fact, you're so confident, that he's graduated
from sleeping in the crate to sleeping with you
in bed.

While things may look great on the surface in
your relationship with your now adult dog,
circumstances change in our lives every day that
can have profound effects on your dog.

Here's a good example:

Let's say you get a new job requiring a move
across town or to a new city. You've made the
transition and things are looking great.

You may be putting in more hours to settle in to
the new job. However, changes like this can be
unsettling to your dog.

His old home has been taken away.

He is now in a new environment where everything
is unfamiliar.

Your schedule has changed, you are working later.

You leave food and water down for him as you have
been getting home past dinner time.

Did I mention the dog food was the grocery store
variety? Filled with cheap carbohydrate fillers?

His expectation of your arrival time is no longer
valid.

There's even a chance that he is walked much less
because you get in too late to walk him.

And this is where it starts. You come home to a
mess on the floor in your new home.

Marking in the house can be a sign of insecurity
in dogs who are old enough to be housetrained.
This starts to become very frustrating for you
while at the same time, the anxiety builds in
your dog.

Your preference is to leave your 5 year old dog
loose in your home to lounge at his leisure but
instead, you limit his daily activities to the
bathroom.

His stress builds as he continues to soil in the
bathroom.

So how can you turn this around? Let's take a
look.

Put him on a learn to earn program adding lots of
structure to his life.

Require him to earn everything by performing a
sit, a down and come, for the things he wants in
life which are food, space, access to you and
walks outside.

Consider a gradual move to a once a day feeding
at night by reducing his morning meal by 25% each
day and adding it to his evening meal. In four
days he will be eating once daily at night. Later
on you can begin to feed a snack in the morning.

Feed him a high protein low carbohydrate diet.
Cheap carbohydrates cause excess serotonin in the
brain which can cause anxiety.

Commit to taking him on structured walks twice
daily.

Play down your departures and arrivals. Ignore
him for 5 minutes when you leave or come home.

Work on good owner leadership skills by requiring
him to work for everything Institute three, 2
minute training sessions each day doing sit, down
and come, to give your dog a sense of working for
leadership rather than feeling responsible for it
himself.

Usually by the end of the first week you can
start to see fewer accidents in the home and by
weeks three and four, your dog should have no
issues with housesoiling at all.

Anyone witnessing their dog's anxieties in the
form of housesoiling should take a look at making
some positive changes to your relationship with
your dog.

It does take work but a revitalized relationship
with your dog is worth every penny.

----------------------------------------------------
dogs are quite simple creatures, we tend to
complicate them. Find simple, uncomplicated ways
to help your dog be a great dog by visiting
http://www.petiquettedog.com

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