need some help!!!!

[meow519]

3 months ago we adopted a pug/rat terrier mix. She was 8 months old at the time and seemed to be in good health. She was supposedly crate trained and house broken. My family loves this dog but we are having a hard time with her. I walk her EVERY morning and EVERY night She is let out in the backyard during the day.. She gets tons of affection,fresh water,food, has a HUGE yard to run in, has plenty of toys and does not listen to a thing we say. She pees and poops all over the house...alot of times right in front of me. She has destroyed shoes,furniture,toys, she chews on everything. Typical day...she is let out of her crate, she loves me up ,gets a drink and we go for a walk. She will go pee and poop outside, then upon returning to the house...she sniffs around and usually will squat and pee on something right in front of me. She steals things from all over the house and chews them up under my bed. When I find her chewing something she isnt supposed to, I will spritz her with a water bottle, that does cause her to drop it but the minute i remove her and the object from the room she will either find a new thing to destroy or poop on the floor. She has no problem using her crate to go to the bathroom either...she has been outside for a considerable amount of time, peed ,played and then will ask to go back in, I will bring her in to the crate and within mintues she has pooped and is more than happy to lie down right next to it. She never alerts us and I am constantly watching her for signs and removing her in mid-squat and she still wont listen. I have had a mutt(male), a rottweiler(female), and a german shepard(male) in the past. Alll of them have been crate and house trained. I have no idea what to do with this dog and ,my husband is really losing his patience. He wants her to go. I know pugs can be stubborn and that seems to be her dominant breed. I have no idea what to do with this type of behavior...any advice would be greatly appreciated. TIA

[Laurie]

Hello TIA:

Wow! That is some letter. You seem to have a great many large problems
all pushed into the body of a little dog. Yikes :) I hope you and your
husband have the will power to see these problems solved.

My name is Laurie and I am a trainer with puppywishes.com, your letter
made me smile because just a few weeks ago I was in the same boat as
you! A close friend of mine saved a dog that he could not keep and I took
it off his hands. What a mistake! To make a long story short, lets just say
that my dog was doing everything that your dog was. Only my dog is large.
That means more pee, and more chewing. And the peeing in the crate was
awful!!!! I also had to deal with a terrible barking problem!

The good news is that my problems are now over. The bad news was
that it took me almost two full months before I started to see any real
big changes. And, come to think of it, I am not sure that I saw any
big changes at all, just a great many little things that became big in the
end.

Here is what I did with my own dog; and it worked.

#1 The peeing in the crate was a big problem, not only because my
house was smelling bad and the dog was always funky, but also because
I know that a "dirty" dog always runs the risk of staying that way forever.
So I had to keep the dog clean, clean, clean. I took a trip to Goodwill
and got myself a TON of cheap old bedding and made sure that the dog
had something ulra clean to sleep on. My experience was that even when
washed the dog was able to pick up the smell of urin on his beds, and it
made no sence to put him in a urin smelling crate, even if I could not smell
it. When I started to change the bedding he started trying harder to be clean.

I also bathed the dog each and every time he peed on himself. I did
this with the utmost of care and used only a very, very mild shampoo, as I did not want to dry out his skin with so many baths.

So, keeping him clean, clean, clean was top on my list.

2# I did not let him act like a nut bar, even when he was playing. I see about 200 dogs per week in training classes, and I realize, clearly, that most unwanted dog behaviour is some kind of misplaced play behaviour. So, my
way of dealing with this is to control the play behaviour.

Many trainers will have their clients run their dogs MORE often as a way to keep untried dogs tired. Well, my feeling is that tired and trained are not one in the same. I also feel that the more you run a crazy dog the more crazy they become. They develop more gusto, more running and jumping power, simply put, the more you run the more you are able to run. In dogs this means, the more they act like goofs, the more goofy they will be.

When my dog was outside he was on a leash, even in the back yard. And
when he started to act silly, I told him to stop. This took a few days for him
to realize that I was not fooling around. I had to set myself up as a leader, not his playmate. I was not another student in gym class, I was the teacher and I needed his full respect.

3# There was no house freedom at all. When he was walking around my house
he was on a leash and very close to me. The moment he got more than three feet away he would PEE. But he was not willing to pee ON me, so I kep him close. close. close.

4# I used lots of set-ups, and this was key when trying to stop his chewing.
He was allowed to chew on ONLY two kinds of toys, these toys were the same color, shape and texture. I would leave these toys on the ground with a number of other things that he could take, but I did not want him to have.
So, to be clear, there were always about seven toys hanging around, however, my dog was being trained to only chew on two types of toy. So the moment, the very SECOND, he took an forbidden item in his mouth, I said,
"NO" - took the toy out of his mouth FAST, and then ignored him. If he made the mistake again - "No!" and so on and so forth. The trick here was to keep the dog close so I could correct his mistakes FAST. When he started to chew on the right toy I simply left him alone. Playing with the toy is self rewarding and there was no need for me to love him up when he was in the act of rewarding himself.

There is more I can add to this - but for now I am going to stop to give you a chance to read and ask any questions. But I want to tell you something before I end. My dog now has house freedom for about four hours every day and I am not having any trouble. I will slowly build this four hours up to whole days. He no longer pees in my house, he is not chewing anything and he is a HAPPY part of the family. He really is a joyful dog.

Again, my name is Laurie from Puppywishes.com
http://www.puppywishes.com

If you have any questions or would like to hear more about how I helped
my dog, simply respond to this post and I will continue.

I hope you are having a good day.