Kennel Pooping Ways! ugh! - Page 1

Greetings fellow dog owners/lovers,

My boyfriend and I have a 10 month old black lab.  He was in training to be a hunting dog for ducks, geese, pheasant.  About a month ago, we brought him home to live with us.  He is crate trained so he sleeps in his crate at night and during the day we keep him in a kennel while we are at work. He has had a few potty accidents around the house and we are diligently working with him to get that issue resolve. He used to poop and pee on the deck and with some patience, he now goes potty in the areas he is supposed to...most of the time.  Now the REAL issue is that he poops in his KENNEL so when we get home he is SOOOOOO happy to see us that he ends up jumping in his own poop and then he smears it ALL over! This then results in hosing down everything including him. He is completely oblivious to his own poop.  Other than keeping him in his crate for 10 hours, how can we break him of his KENNEL pooping ways?
Could it be that maybe his has separation anxiety?

Any ideas would be very much appreciated.  Thank you!
Vikki

?      Welcome;  now we can see your question, you
will get some comments and some answers !

I have tried to help, in my post below - good luck dealing
with this.

Linda.

He has to go to the bathroom sometime. :-)

This is not separation anxiety. Most likely, it is your dog is being left alone too long, and the dog has to go. You sent him away for training? And he came back doing this? Is that correct or did I read that wrong?

If it was separation anxiety he would be destroying the crate to get OUT. At some point he learned no one was coming to let him out and he went. Then no one came to clean it up, so he learned to ignore it. No way to correct this without being able to be around to let him out on a timely and consistent basis. IMHO

You might need help with his retraining and potty schedule with an added  mid-day potty relief stop, perhaps hire someone if your work prevents that person from being you.

It is unrealistic to expect a dog to hold it for TEN hours! 

Especially one who is still only 1O months old and may be
still growing, although granted at 10 months he ought to have
some control.  I suspect that you (or the trainer ?) have allowed
him to develop this as a habit as much as anything, by leaving him
in the kennel for much too long, and then not acting on sorting it out
as soon as it began to happen.  Some dogs are much less fastidious
about sitting and treading in their own mess than others, so it
is a mistake to rely on the 'not going where they sleep' thing to
a total extent.  Especially since his kennel likely has an inner
and outer element, so he has a considerable amount of space
to 'play' with, over and above his actual bed.

I would go back to using the crate only;  but getting him out and
running him around more often;  if done at sensible intervals, which
includes last thing at night, a little while after all meals, etc, this
should empty him out while he is outside, esp. since he is
toiletting while outside already, part of the time.  You also need
to do two things which you may be doing already but have not
mentioned:  give him key command words,  to go "wees", "potty"
or "empty", whatever;  and heap PRAISE upon him every time he
gets it right and goes in the proper place.

I have had a succession of kennel-raised  dogs of various ages
who I have taught to be clean indoors, in crates and in their kennels
by this method.

It means you have to devote quite a bit of time to him, and be very
vigilant, and always go outside with him.  But that is why good
breeders, IME, insist on not selling a puppy to a home where the
pup will be left alone all day.  Same principle applies, whether it
will be an indoor dog or a kennel dog.  If you don't want messy
kennels, you have to housebreak.  If that is all done early on in
the dog's life it is much easier by the time it grows bigger;  unfortunately
I suspect you are now dealing with that gap in earlier education ?

Sounds like the trainer kept him in a kennel, and he has just gotten used to going potty in the run. Dogs tend to go potty same place all the time, so if hes used to going in a run now, he thinks that is normal an acceptable.

As everyone else has pointed out, where and when do you expect this poor dog to be able to relieve his bowels, if you're crating him in the house all night and kenneling him outside all day and you don't want him to defecate in either of those places?  Are you really believing it's reasonable to expect this dog--regardless of whether he's 8 months or 8 years old--you think it's reasonable to try and restrict him to that limited window of time when one of you has come home from work or wherever and have taken him to the spot you've designated as 'his' potty areas?!?!

Let's try an experiment, shall we?  Let's have you and your boyfriend follow the same elimination schedule as you expect your dog to follow, and see how well you do with that.  Oh, but wait--we have to adjust the time frame for you and the boyfriend a bit, since dogs have much more potent stomach acids for breaking down the food and a shorter gastrointestinal tract to move it through, and therefore their digestive process is faster than that of a human. Soooo, let's say you and your boyfriend can only empty your bowels every other day, and only in the same time frame you expect your dog to work within. 

Not gonna work for you two, is it?

And it's not going to work for your dog, either. 

You can get him on a reasonable schedule by feeding him twice a day, and as long as you allow enough time in the morning before and after his breakfast, he'll likely take care of business before you leave for work and won't need to go again until just before or just after his dinner. But it's not fair to try and limit him to a narrow window of time between the end of your work day and his bedtime.

Maybe you could hire someone to come in each afternoon to walk him? That way he won't need to go in the  kennel run because he's been confined there for ten hours with no other options...

Is the issue that he poops in the kennel or that he poops in a place that he runs thru when he sees you?

Put his food in the place where he usually poops.  That might get him to poop somewhere else.

I have a dog with the world's smallest bladder so I put a litter box in his kennel.  Better than nothing.  I use the pine wood litter.  It doesn't clump or anything.

I am usually gone at work 9 hours a day so I only feed my dogs a hand full (literally) in the morning.  They get a nice meal as soon as I'm home, and then later on in the evening they get a second smaller meal.  They don't poop in the house (or in the crate, I have one 25lb dog that is in a huge GSD sized crate right now) unless they are legitimately sick in which case I come home at lunch to let them out or at least block them off in a cement or linoleum area.

I don't think it's SA, just that he's gotten used to pooping in the kennel and maybe isn't naturally a very "clean" dog (my dogs have grown up very "clean", they won't relieve themselves in kennel runs so my dog boarder lets them out in her yard).  It's likely a combination of feeding schedule, age, and habit.