dog peeing inside

Episode 55 | How to train a dog to pee and poop inside

Dog trainers are commonly asked to help dog owners teach a dog to "potty" outside. Well, thanks to this crazy quarantine situation, we're not being asked the opposite question: How can I teach my dog to pee and poop inside? Annie interviews School For The Dogs' trainer Anna Ostroff, who has a dog who is a professional when it comes to peeing and pooping inside. Learn how to train a dog to have a potty spot inside, and how to put it on cue! Also: How socializing with people in face masks can help us thinks about dogs greeting each other in leash.

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Products mentioned in this episode:

http://FreshPatch.com

http://DoggieLawn.com

 

Transcript:

(00:38):

Hey everyone. We've been getting a lot of questions about how to train a dog to go inside. Usually dog trainers are asked for help training dogs to go outside, but due to this mass quarantine, people can't go outside with their dogs or don't want to go outside with their dogs. And suddenly this new problem presents itself. How do we train dogs to go inside for an expert opinion on this? I wanted to talk to our trainer, Anna Ostroff, who is one of my very good friends and just a wonderful trainer and person. But as often happens with me, I was kind of last minute on this. And so rather than arrange an interview with her in advance, I called her up with kind of a surprise interview. I think you're going to enjoy hearing about her dog ginger and how she trained ginger to do her business in the closet.

(01:50):

Annie: So this is a kamikaze interview cause I, I want to talk to you about teaching your dog to pee in that house recording right now. Is that okay? I can record you talking about how your dog pees in the house. People don’t normally call you up to ask you how you got your dog to pee in the house? Is this weird?

(02:16):

Anna: Well, you know, these are weird times. You never know these days. How are you? Cool. I'm doing okay. So, you want me to just like talk about how I trained Ginger?

(02:36):

Annie: To anyone listening, I should explain that you have a dog who's very sensitive to New York City among other things and well why don't you explain how it came to pass that she is an indoor pottier. I mean, the reason I want to talk about this is because so many people are asking this question right now because they don't want to, some of them can't go outside or feel like they shouldn't outside or whatever. The reason is there's an increasing amount of people trying to get their dog to go to the bathroom inside, which is unusual and unusual thing for a dog trainer to be asked about because usually it's the opposite.

(03:15):

Anna: Yeah, totally. So Ginger, I, you know, as you mentioned, Annie, she definitely has what we as trainers call urban anxiety. So she gets really nervous going out into the city with all of the cars and sound from skateboards and we don't have a backyard cause we live in a, in an apartment up on the fifth floor with no terrace or backyard. And so one of the things that is really important to me with all of the dogs that I work with and with my own dog of course, is to try to reduce stress in the animal’s life, to try to be sure they're happy and healthy. And one of the things I knew that I could do to help my own dog was give her an indoor potty option.

(04:12):

So for ginger I knew if I could give her that option, it would be kind of one less stressor throughout the day for her. Now to be clear, she's still is outdoor potty trained, so she does still go potty outside. She knows she's, she can go to the bathroom anytime she's outside and inside. She knows that there is one specific location that she can go to the potty inside. And so especially like, you know, last potty of the day, right before bed, I feel like there's no need to stress her out and take her out into the crazy city. And some days if she's a little more nervous, we just, you know, she doesn't have to go outside at all if she'd wants to just go potty in her little potty spot. So the way we set it up for her we have a closet that has it's like a, a door that slides.

(05:06):

And basically it just, I would, when it's time to, you know, if you were going to take your dog out for a walk I time it so that she gets at least three, if not four potties a day. And if those aren't outside, then they're going to be in her little potty spot and we haven't set up in a closet. So there's like a tray and like her little pads and stuff that are on top of the tray. And she goes right into the closet to her potty spot and then she comes out. And when we were first training her to do this it actually was was not immediate because she was very, very well trained to go potty outside as many dogs are. So she was really, really well potty trained to go outside.

Speaker 4 (05:55):

So it did take a little while. And the way I did it was I would walk her on her leash to her little closet, potty patch and take her in. And I would wait and see if she would go to the bathroom if she wouldn't go to the bathroom. And it had been, you know, like a, I dunno, like four or five minutes and she just wasn't going. I would just follow it by taking her outside. And I did this pattern for multiple days until one day she kind of picked up the pattern that every time she goes and stands in the closet, we follow it by pottying outside. And one day Ginger kind of looked at me very curiously and peed in the closet and then looked at me to see if it was okay. And she got a big reward, praise, party time, lots of fun, lots of happiness high value treats.

(06:47):

And she pretty much took, you know, probably a little bit more of like really high high value reinforcement to let her know that that was okay and something she was allowed to do. But sooner rather than later it just became an additional potty spot. And also I would love to let listeners know that she is still incredibly well potty trained. So we come and visit my family in Maryland a lot and she never has indoor potty accidents, so there's no confusion. She knows that if she's not near her potty spot that outdoors the potty spot so she doesn't ever like have accidents if we're inside somewhere else. She knows that in New York city, in our apartment, she has basically like humans have a bathroom, she has like a little bathroom and she knows she could go there.

(07:36):

Annie: A couple of questions. Did you experiment with different substrates or did you, what, what do you use now? Weewee pads?

(07:45):

Anna:  This is actually really a funny story. We went through so many different substrates and it wasn't because it was actually less about initially trying to figure out what ginger would go on. That was part of it. We wanted her comfortable and we knew she liked to go on grass patches or dirt patches. But the reason we had to go through so many is because we started out with you know, like the, there's some really great real grass patches, like Fresh Patch and Doggy Lawn.

(08:15):

Annie: That will like deliver, deliver to you.

(08:17):

Anna: Yeah. And those are great services and we use them for awhile. I actually really like both. I think they're excellent. If you have an outside option, like a terrace, and you want your dog to go like right on that patch. The problem is, is when you're doing it in the closet of a smaller office, your entire little small office starts to smell like you're like, like dirt and grass. So it was kind of funny. It wasn't actually so much about the pee smell. It was actually this really smelling like, like a, I dunno, like a farm or something like really outdoors-y so we were like, this is so weird. And so we tried like another one that we were like, well, maybe like the other brand won't have as much of like a, a turf smell, you know? And that one did too.

(09:04):

So then we this was after she was our, so as soon as we started with that, and I think it probably helps that we started with that because she was very inclined to, you know, go to the bathroom on something that seemed like dirt or grass. But we then moved to basically a like a, a fake turf grass, so it wasn't real turf. It was just like, like the fake plasticky grass over top of what we may pad. And that also worked for a while. And it was, it was a totally fine solution except that it, you know, it was harder to keep clean because the plastic grass material, like if you want to recycle it, it's hard to really keep that clean enough so that you don't have any urine smell. And you know, where as with like the Fresh Patch and the Doggy Lawn and like those you could, like you said, you can get them delivered.

(09:58):

So those were easy just to like throw away, come and go. But what dawned on me after a little while was just that Ginger was just now trained to go in this location. So I kind of thought to myself, it might not matter if it's more that, you know, it might not matter if it's grass anymore because she now knows this is her potty spot. And so I just started experimenting with plain pee pads after that. And she was totally fine. She wants, she knew it was her potty spot. She knew she could go no matter what substrate it was. So then since then we've just kind of now just converted to just plain wavy pads, which has just been a really easy solution for cleanup and everything.

Annie: Have you had any clients lately ask you about this as far as dealing with their own dogs?

(10:48):

Anna: You know I have not, but I know other trainers at the studio have, I know both. Em and I think Erin have had a lot of clients asking about it, so I'm not surprised given the times that people are asking about this.

(11:02):

Annie: Do you have any specific advice then for others who are just trying to get started doing this? I know I asked you a question and I'm being rude by answering it, but I want to hear what you have to say too. But I suggest people just pick one spot. First of all, not have weewee pads all over the house,

(11:21):

Anna: 100%. And that was part of what was really important when we were training Ginger, that it was only going to be about this one location for us. It was one location in a closet. But that is exactly why I don't think she ever has accidents anywhere else. And that she's not confused about this concept of going inside because it's not about going inside. It's about going in your one potty spot. So because we were so on top of only that one location it didn't mess any of her outside training. And it didn't cause additional accidents in the house

(11:59):

Annie: And, and any other tips?

(12:01):

Anna: Yeah, I mean, so I think for a different dogs you might need to do some slightly different things. One thing that was, Oh, that I didn't mention that I think would be a huge tip that is really very, very helpful with Ginger is that I had already trained Ginger to go potty on cue. So she knew if I said go potty that it meant that she could go to the bathroom. So even though in the very beginning she was skeptical cause she knew she wasn't supposed to go inside. And it definitely helped because once you have potty on cue, you can hopefully get your dog to go in different locations. When you need them to go. So one thing you might want to do, if you're kind of still in between and your dog is still mostly going outside and you're just keeping it short, you might want to try to get going to the bathroom on cue.

(12:54):

And the best way to do that is just when they're going calmly say your potty cue. So for Ginger, it's as simple as go potty that is her potty cube. But calmly say your potty cue when they're done, mark and reward just like you would any other behavior. And just realize it's gonna take longer than teaching like a fit because you can't get like 10 potties and treats in a row, right? You're just going to get potty when you get body. So essentially it's a good idea to try to get that on cue and just be patient knowing it's going to take a little while. Once you start to know like what your dog signs are and you know, a lot of dogs may sniff in circle before they go to the bathroom or something like that. Once you start to know what your dog signs are, you can start backing the cue up a little bit so that you're saying it just before they go and they're actually starting to respond to the queue. And then hopefully over time you actually have it on cue, which can really help you to transfer it to a different location.

(13:54):

Annie: What about walking the dog on a leash to their potty spot?

(13:58):

Yeah, so that's what I did with Ginger early on. Because she thought I was a crazy person the first time I gave her her potty cue in the closet. So what really helped was setting it up. Like I was going for a walk and literally walking her over to her patch on her leash. And that is also something that even to this day, usually she just walks in and goes now, but even to this day if like she's super involved in something else or super tired and it's getting late and I'm like, Oh my gosh, we just have to go to the bathroom now cause I'm going to go to bed, I'll put her on her leash, walk her over and she'll go right away.

(14:37):

Annie: Right. Because it's like part of the part of the queue really starts as early as putting on the lease. Like we think about a queue queue as the immediate thing. But really there can be secondary and tertiary and…

(14:51):

Anna: Yeah. And actually that's a really good point too. Cause like even when I visit my parents and she, she, we have a little fenced in backyard and she can go to the bathroom out in the backyard. When I'm visiting my family, if she hasn't gone to the bathroom, and again, it's like late, we need her to go so we can go to bed or something. If I just put her on her leash and walk her around the yard, she goes. So that's like a really good, a really good point. Is that that it's just part of the queue

(15:18):

Annie: Anna, you're the best. Yeah.

(15:20):

Anna: The only other thing I'll say is they do make those pheromones too. Or I think it's like that. Like I think it's like a pheromone spray that smells kind of like pee that you can spray, you can spray the like grass with or like the pad with to try to get your dog more excited about billing.

(15:35):

Annie: I've seen those, I've seen those. I've never known if they've worked, but I guess it can't hurt. You can also buy like gallons of animal pee. Maybe we could start selling dog pee sprays!That might be more reasonable. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Right before we start making a commodity out of pee. All right. Well thank you so much for letting me letting me interview you in this kind of blitz way. And I will talk to you soon.

(16:24):

Annie: So I don't have a fun fact or a “Woof Shout Out” today. What I do have is just a simple observation. As dog trainers, we often tell people to avoid leash greetings outside. This is because leashes can inhibit natural body movement and can kind of screw things up. When dogs go to greet each other because we're pulling on the leash, they're pulling on the leash, their necks are getting restricted, et cetera, et cetera. And it can be hard for, among other things, it can be hard for dogs to read each other's body language in a natural way. And often as dog trainers, we tell our clients, imagine you are in a social situation wearing a straight jacket. And I have been thinking about this because I've never been in a social situation wearing a straight jacket, but I have been in a lot of situations lately where I've realized I don't know how to read the social cues, the, the little bits of body language people are giving to me because they're wearing masks and I'm walking down the street.

(17:36):

The other day I realized I had this feeling that, that everybody was angry, angry at me or maybe the angry at the world, but I couldn't help but take it personally. And it really hit home when, when my daughter started crying at the park the other day and a man who was maybe 10, 12 feet away, stuck his fingers in his ears and I realized I, is he being playful? Is he really annoyed? You know, I realize I couldn't tell because I couldn't see his mouth. So I think this is an opportunity for us to get a sense of what it must feel like for dogs to try and read each other, each other's body language when they are being inhibited in some way. You know, to the extreme is like Halloween parades where not only is your dog, you know, dressed up like Liberace with a cardboard piano stuck to his back, but so are all the dogs around him. And you can imagine how that could be stressful to try and read all those other, there's so many lessons in this time we're living through that. Relate to dog training. So more to come, but I'll leave it there for now.

(18:59):

If you'd like to sign up for the school for the dog's newsletter I have put together a special guide on house training, which includes instructions on how to teacher dog to potty on cue. Just sign up for the newsletter at anniegrossman.com/potty and I will go ahead and send that to you. Thanks so much for listening. 

Annie Grossman
annie@schoolforthedogs.com