GEORGE NEWS - Is your dog driving you up the wall with behavioural issues

Qualified local animal behaviourist George van Huyssteen (DipCABT, CCAB, CABTI, MHERA) of Neuro Paws can give you advice.

As part of an educational drive, he will answer readers' questions once a week, either in George Herald or on the Neuro Paws website and their social platforms. This way it could also help others facing similar problems with their pets.

Describe your challenges in a short email and send it to neuropaws@gmail.com. Every week, he will select a question to answer. Here is the first answer to questions Van Huyssteen received this week.

Question: My adult rescue dog is messing inside the house. What do I do?

Answer from Van Huyssteen: 

When you bring a new dog into your home, he/she will need to learn about your house rules. Therefore, it would be a good idea to start by putting the dog on a schedule.  

It would help if you started by feeding your dog twice a day at the same time. After each meal, you should take him outside, and if he 'does his business', give him verbal praise as well as a cue, like 'wee-wee', for instance. 

After a while, you might have a dog that will eliminate on cue. Also, always take him out to the same spot and only clean up a little to start with. If there is already a smell of urine, the dog is more likely to go to the same spot to do his business.

Take him out every two hours for the first few days or weeks and watch him when inside the house. By observing the dog, you will know when he is looking for a place to go as he will start sniffing the ground, many times in circles, to find a suitable place. This will be a cue to take him outside immediately. 

You should also start asking him to go outside on cue. For instance, you can use a word that you will only be using in the context of asking the dog to go outside, like 'outside' or 'wee-wee-time', or any word or phrase of your choice.

 Should you do this every time you escort him outside, the dog will learn the cue, and you should be able to ask him to go outside after a week or so without going out with him. 

Other times to take him outside are after a play session, after he drinks water, after each meal and every two hours until he starts going outside on his own.

The bottom line is that doing his business outside should be constantly reinforced for the first week or two until he starts going outside on his own.

What happens when he messes inside the house? 

Some advice you might get is to rub his nose in or hit him with a rolled-up newspaper. This, however, might cause even more significant problems. In the dog world, for punishment to work, the animal must be punished during the behaviour you want to reduce or eliminate. 

Should you punish a dog a minute after the event, he will not be able to connect the punishment with the action, so it will be pointless. 

Secondly, should you keep punishing the dog while messing, he might learn that it is not safe to eliminate or defecate in front of you, so he will wait until you are out of sight to do his business, and then you have an absolute complex problem to solve as you will not be able to catch him in the act. 

He might start doing his business at different locations where you cannot see him. 

What should you do? 

The best solution is to prevent accidents, as explained above, but unfortunately, accidents will happen from time to time, and how you deal with them is extremely important. 

If you see your dog squatting down or lifting a leg, you can give a firm (not shout) clap or make a sound. 

This will startle the dog and contraction should occur preventing urine flow. Immediately after, take him outside and wait for him to do something, and praise him for every single attempt or drop in the right place. 

If he already made the accident inside, clean it up with a detergent or cleaning agent that does not contain ammonia. This is where many owners get it wrong.

Should you use an ammonia-based product, the dog is likely to go to that same spot as dogs will go where there is already a smell of urine and ammonia is present in urine. 

Some dogs might even interpret it as another dog in the house and might start marking over it. The best way to clean up urine is to use a citrus-based cleaner.

Should a dog have an accident on a carpet or bed, it would be a good idea to restrict his access to such an area as carpets can be tough to clean thoroughly so no urine smell is left over. 

Letting the dog sleep in a dog crate or small confined area is another method of helping him as he is least likely to go close to where he sleeps, but confinement or a crate should never be seen or used as punishment. Crate training will be needed which will also take some time. 

In many cases, prevention is better than a cure, so for the first few days at a new home, keep an eye on your new family member and teach him in a way that he will understand the appropriate place to go to eliminate and defecate.

For more information regarding house training, send us an email at: neuropaws@gmail.com

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