Dog has started toileting in the house

[sarahskye]

So Ive had Skye for almost 2 months now, and after the difficult start, he settled in, discovered the couch, went outside to toilet, slept downstairs without waking me up, and yesterday suddenly mastered the stairs alone. 

However, for the last 2 weeks he seems to have regressed in the toileting department. He knows he goes outside, we go out for early morning walks and he normally does at least 2 poos, and he has access to the garden pretty much whenever he wants. I can not get him to go for a walk at night, and have to bribe him just to go in the garden then, where he will usually just have a wee. No matter how long I stand out there with him, thats all he will do. Now im regularly waking up and going downstairs to poos on the carpet. He has also cocked his leg and peed on furniture in my parents house a few times, and pood on my floor twice during the day when I left him for a short time (one of those times was im front of my dad!). The daytime incidents have happened when the door was open also, so he could have gone outside. When weve caught him, he has been shouted at and put outside. 

Ive tried adjusting his feeding times to try and make him poo before bed, but nothing seems to work and I just dont know what to do. Any advice from anyone who's had these problems would be great! (im in the UK, and crating isn't really a thing here) 

[macoduck]

Shouting at him won't do any good.

I'd suggest tethering him to you so that he is never alone in the house away from you.  He's still too new and hasn't fully learned to potty outside. If there is something outside that is scaring him at night, he may still be thinking about it during the day too. With tethering you may see the signals he's been trying to give you that he has to go.

Also use a bellyband to curtail the peeing in the house but still keep him tethered to you.

Use an xpen or baby gate to contain him to an area at night.

Generally it's at the 3 month point that personalities start to show in newly adopted greyhounds.

[MerseyGrey]

I agree that shouting at him won’t help, he’ll sneak off and do it quietly where you won’t be able to shout at him. The trick really is to catch him just before he does it and then shoo him outside but it will mean keeping a very close eye on him for a while.

The night-time pooping - is he warm enough? Could something like a boiler coming on be disturbing him? If he wakes up during the night for one reason, he might just decide that he’s up anyway so he’ll have a poo.

When you say he won’t walk at night, what time are you taking him out? We walk ours first thing (5.30am 😵) and then at around 4pm. Usually this is enough for him and he can go through the night without pooping until the morning. We let him out for a last wee before bed too. We do have occasional accidents which we can’t always explain but mostly we don’t wake up to be greeted by ‘kitchen apples’.

Final thought - is his worming up to date? We seem to have more accidents towards the end of the month when he is due to be wormed.

And absolutely finally, check your cleaning fluid (and at your parents) and make sure it’s ammonia free as this could be encouraging this behaviour.