just got a 4 year old yorkie need some help

[mary345]

I just got a 4 year old yorkie from someone and the woman i got her from says she is house trained well she has been having a lot of accidents in the house and she does not go to the door when she has to go in fact she actually doesn't go anywhere unless i am there she follows me like a shadow i even have to take her in the bathroom with me or she will cry outside the door the whole time. any ideas on how i can get my dog to stop going in the house i don't mind if i have to use puppy pads or anything i just don't know how to go about starting to train her since she is already 4 and set in her bad habits. also is it normal for her to be following me like she does i have had dogs all my life mostly labs and they never acted like this. Also she won't eat her dog food i bought the exact kind her previous owner said she ate and she won't touch it she keeps eating the cats food will cat food hurt her or is it ok to let her eat it

[Denise1175]

I am so sorry you took offence at my comments.
I didnt intend on it to be a "snotty response" and i dont ever proclaim to know a great deal about training.

It was a personal statement i said regarding rubbing dogs noses in whatever... which i dont agree with, however.... we all have our own opinions and ways of doing things.

I only tried giving a little advice on the way I trained my own small dog.

Once again sorry. Good luck with sorting out the problems you have and hope they are getting easier. :)

D x

[katrinika]

While trying to re-housebreak my dogs I bought a puppy training video.  On the video the trainer said that to train your dog to "tell" you when she needs to go out you - tell her "Outside!", walk with her to the door, then wait, when she gets a little restless and makes a complaining noise praise her highly then take her out.  He said that if you do this every time after a while (how long depending on the mental acuity of the dog) she will get the idea that it is good to "tell" you when she wants Outside!  

As for food, my dogs can be very picky eaters when it comes to dog food.  I personally have multiple allergies (among them soy, sunflower seed and flax seed), so I'm sensitive to the issue.  Both Gidget and Maggie react to some foods, soy, maybe, it's so hard to tell with the three dozen ingredients on the dog food bags.  Maggie's ears get red inside (she's very light-skinned) and Gidget starts licking them.  Gidget throws up.  Both dogs will chew their paws or lick body parts.  This notifies me that there is an allergy working.  I've tried many different dog foods and I've come to realize that they will refuse to eat foods that they react allergically to.  Unfortunately it's hard to find a dog food that does not contain soy (which, since I've been reading up on it I will never, ever eat or give to my dogs again).  I just very recently found out that when it says "preserved with mixed tocopherols" that that almost always means soybean oil.  On the other hand, most dog foods are nutritional supplement enriched.  This means that there is a possibility that the same dog vitamins that were recalled for lead contamination may very well be in the dog foods I've been trying to feed them.  So, be very careful what you feed your dog!  Don't know what else it can be... cats are fussy, dogs eat everything... at least that's how it used to be.  My dogs aren't stupid and they love food, any food.  If they're refusing to eat there's a reason.  

[mary345]

Thanks for all the advice so far today she has not had an accident thank goodness I did go out and buy some puppy pads and the spray that you can spray on them and she doesn't even seem interested in it I have been taking her out after she eats and drinks and wakes and about every 2 hours and just a few mins ago she actually went and stood infront of the door and looked at me i took her out and she peed the thing i don't like is she does not bark at the door she just stood there. She also does not pee or poop in the grass she does it on the cement i think it is funny she doesn't like to even walk in the grass. i went and bought some wet food for her in hopes that she would eat that and not the cat food she did eat it but now she is vomitting so i hope it is just the change in food

[katrinika]

I live with an elderly woman - when her husband had to go into assisted-living and she was left living alone in a remote house and my husband died and I had to sell my house, she invited me to come live with her.  In my own home my dogs had a doggie door and a fenced-in yard but even so, during my husband's final illness all three dogs started having "accidents" in the house.  I thought it was the upheaval of our constantly going to the hospital, that the dogs were picking up on the stress.  The adjustment, on moving here, to having to take them out for walks was hard for them and me (I have my own health issues).  All three dogs lost their housebreaking completely despite FREQUENT outings.  Needless to say my friend was upset at my having to wash the carpets so often.  Needless to say, with already walking them every three hours or so I had to do something drastic... Initially I diapered all three dogs (expensive), pretty quickly my poodle got the idea and she's okay provided she gets out on schedule.  On the others I tried praise, treats, reprimands (not shouting, for pete's sake).  It's been over a year and nothing has worked.  My girlfriend actually requested that I NOT reprimand Gidget "because it makes her so unhappy" (which is true).  

Following is a post I did earlier to this forum.  Maybe it sheds some light on the problem, it is too soon to tell:  

Another experience - reduced energy, personality loss
by katrinika, 7 hours ago
Tags: energy, personality, PetTabs, playfulness
Not long ago I accidently dropped the dogs' PetTab vitamins in their water bowl and ruined the whole bottle.  While I was waiting for the new bottle to come in the mail I noticed that their eyes stopped gunking up and they had more energy and their personalities were more like they used to be (loving, playing, asking for petting and attention).  As soon as I resumed giving them the vitamin their eyes gunked up again and both dogs lost all energy again.  I had wondered, years ago, why it seemed like all the dogs lost their energy and normal personalities at the same time.  I thought it was the weather or pollution or age or something.  PetTabs must have changed their formula.  The vitamins are gone.  ..... Several weeks later, both little dogs are back to their old selves - I'd forgotten how much time I spent cuddling them before their personalities changed!  

by Misfits4Me , 6 hours ago
To: katrinika
I'm thinking the Pet Tab Vitamins were recalled not long ago.....I'd have to go look that up....I wonder if yours was part of that bad batch?   Karla

by Misfits4Me , 6 hours ago
To: katrinika
I found it...It was lead poisoning in a large number of pet vitamins including Pet Tabs....
The recall was in July of this year.......Karla

by katrinika, 4 hours ago
To: misfits4me
Wow!  If this is the case, then it has been in the vitamins for years.  They were fine for years, then the change... listless, little or no running, disinterested in things that normally were their lifeblood (like toys, and cuddling, we had a regular schedule!)   :)   Also, I just noticed that Gidget is snoring again.  She hasn't done that in years but it used to be routine (and funny).  It was clear that all three dogs were not themselves.  

My beloved dachsund-mix got the sickest - eventually falling to what the doctor believed was a slow-growing cancer, probably hemangioma sarcoma.  At the same time the tumor appeared her eye on that side bulged and went blind and upon palpitation she showed pain, probably in the spleen.  I had the tumor (in her ear) removed, I barely had the money even for that.  I got medicine to try to reduce the bulge and blindness of the eye and medicine for pain.  I didn't have the pathology test done because if it was cancer I had no money for treatment.  But she had never done well with anesthesia and CLEARLY hated the way the pain medications made her feel.  She just got weaker, until she lost interest in eating.  The vet said she could give steroids to try to stimulate appetite, but rather than have her in pain, or miserable because of the pain meds, I accepted that at fifteen I had to put my sweetheart to sleep.  It hurt terribly, and I miss her, but putting her to sleep was not as bad as watching her suffer.  Now I wonder how much lead-poisoning could have had to do with that.  

It is SO good to have my other two babies back to their sparkling, happy dog selves.  

Denise1175, my dogs are on an "outside!" every 2-1/2 hours schedule and that's going to be hard to change.  But, since discontinuing their Pet Tabs Gidget rarely has a wet diaper at the time to go out - where before she almost always had wet.  

Maybe your snotty response to my story - it was not advice, just a tale of what I'd been forced to do - is good, because maybe somebody else with a dog who can't wait has the same vitamin problem.  Note that Karla said Pet Tabs was only one of many vitamins involved in the recall.  

I don't profess to know anything about dog training - obviously you do.  I'd be glad to hear your advice for getting Gidget and Maggie beyond the 2-1/2 hour schedule, if indeed the vitamins were the culprit.  

[Denise1175]

also mary, my papillon is a very fussy eater.
She just picks around with food, I always have a bowl of meaty meal balls for her which is out all the time, she picks at those...
Then i put down a meal of some dinner we have usually when i make a dinner with meat etc...
I sometimes buy the bags of cooked frozen chicken and defrost those or make her some liver cake. (look up on net for recipe)
I think with smaller fussy dogs, its a case of varying a little and experimenting.  She wont starve though, so dont worry, just leave the dry stuff out, then give a little bit of something else during the day too.

we also have a bernese (quite a difference) and he eats anything in sight! haha, so i was pretty worried myself getting the papillon and having this little scrap of a thing that would eat nothing lol..... i've learnt that she will be fine with some days eating next to nothing, then next day she'll make up for it ...... :))

[Denise1175]

I think as soon as pup has a nap and wakes i would take it straight outside and stand and wait till she goes to the toilet.... then every 2 hours and also after she has had a meal.... so really its after each sleep and feed and if she drinks a large volume too..... then the 2 hr intervals until you can stretch it longer.
I have a papillon and i have to watch her like a hawk too....
She sleeps in her crate, loves it in fact....it isnt locked, she just likes to go in herself for bedtime.
I put her straight outside on waking, at whatever time she has a sleep.... before bedtime its the last thing i do too and after each meal or at regular intervals.
Yours will get the message eventually too.

I am very much against shouting at dogs, and the wearing of diapers.
She will never learn in that way.... its the actions of litterally opening the door when she'll learn where to go!
Rubbing a dogs nose in it after the event serves no purpose at all!... i find that awful in fact.

please just try what i have said and good luck with it, Denise

[katrinika]

My yorkie-mix is the same way - accidents, following me, scratching at the bathroom door while I'm in there.  She was a rescue from a bad home so she's very, very timid.  When she pees she barely stops for a moment and barely lifts one little paw off the ground, so catching he in the act is nearly impossible.  On the rare occasion that I do catch her, she is so timid and so very, very easily frightened (if I sneeze she runs to the bedroom and dives under the bed) that raising my voice or doing the nose-in-the-pee-swat-the-butt thing just terrifies her and no lesson is learned except to be scared of me and more timid than ever.  I had to put her on diapers and then time how often she wet them.  If I get her outside every 2-1/2 hours all is well (mostly).  1/2 hour too soon she doesn't take care of business, 1/2 hour too late and she's already peed.  So, she wears a diaper all the time, which I try to keep clean by taking her out every 2-1/2 hours.  She wears a "permanent" diaper with a (human) incontinence pad which I change often, wet or dry.  Sometimes she poops in the diaper and I clean her bottom thoroughly with a baby wet wipe before I put on the clean diaper.  When she gets it in her head to rub against the furniture until the diaper comes off (usually under the bed) I use a doggie harness with a strap of elastic in between it and the diaper - I attach the strap to harness and diaper by a snap-hook (like the kind at the end of a leash) at the harness end and a clamp (as found on suspenders) on the diaper end.  When she gets the idea that she can't get the diaper off I remove the harness/strap part for a while, until she goes back to rubbing off the diaper, then we repeat with the harness.  It's not an ideal solution, but it's better than washing the carpets every week.  

I'll be watching this discussion to see if somebody has a better idea!