<p>If I’m understanding this correctly, the pup’s only been in your house for ~2 months and at least part of that time he’s had a UTI. Realistically, he’s probably had it for around 3 weeks if you’re almost two weeks in to antibiotics. If so, I’d still give it some time and follow the advice given here.</p>
<p>mommmaj - we found a chiropractor that will actually make an adjustment to our senior dog’s back. I cannot tell you how much this has helped her. Friends of ours took their senior dog in who had a stiff leg and limp - after the adjustment - the dog was almost not limping and jumped into the back seat of their truck. She said it was the first time in a long time that they didn’t have to pick him up. Might call around and see if anyone does this. ours charges $20 for the dog adjustment.</p>
<p>I have 2 little cavalier king charles that are laying on my butt right now. Actually, my butt isn’t THAT big, they’re laying on the back of my legs too. And it feels so great, they are the sweetest breed ever, not so smart, but I couldn’t imagine returning one of my little loves.</p>
<p>But…I don’t think cavaliers are very good with being crated. Most people I know don’t crate their cavaliers. We have a dog door, and they use it whenever they want to. One of my dogs always has to pee, especially since she’s on that urinary food that makes her thirsty. Cavaliers are princesses, and yes, every now and then I smell that someone urinated somewhere. Quite often it is in the blankets that they use for sleeping, I guess it just doesn’t bother them. We have the basement blocked off because one of them took a dump down there, and no matter how often we clean it…they remember, and if they can sneak down there and do it instead of going in the rain, why not? So we just block it off.</p>
<p>I’m no expert, we haven’t done a good job training our dogs to do anything. But we just manipulate them to do/not do the things we want. Is there any way you can install a dog door, to at least a small area? We cut one into a door, laid some deck and dirt, grass…and they like to do their business on the deck instead of the grass. Go figure. I don’t know, is it really such a big deal if he pees in the crate every now and then?</p>
<p>We have a Cavalier who will turn 11 in May. I’m more concerned about the fact that the breeders didn’t have your dog trained when you got her, which if I understand correctly, would be 10 months of age. We got ours at three months, and within a few days, she was trained. Consistency is the key. Every two hours I would take her out, use the key word, give praise, etc., just like what was described upthread. I was really patting myself on the back. While we were training her, we took her water bowl away after 7 PM. The last time we let her outside was 11 PM, and she would make it until 6 AM in the morning. Then she got an UTI, and it seemed to be a struggle for years. She would have only occasional accidents, but it was still frustrating. She would go into a room that we seldom used to do her business. So I read that they don’t ever do their business in the room where they ate, so I put an extra bowl of food in that room. She ate from it maybe once or twice, and then she stopped going to that room to pee.</p>
<p>We crate our Cavalier at night, and whenever we go away. She likes it in there. We have it underneath the built in desk in the kitchen, so it gives her that den feeling. When she sees me put my coat on, she runs in and sits, waiting for me to close the door. So cute.</p>
<p>Good luck. They really are an intelligent breed.</p>
<p>^^Your cavalier sounds far better trained than ours. When we try to put them (particularly the older one) into a crate, she whines and barks. It is pathetic. They want to sleep on the couch, on a pile of soft blankets…though they prefer to sleep with us, but we don’t allow it anymore as the younger one snores loud enough to wake the dead.</p>
<p>I should try putting their food bowls all over the basement some time, maybe they’ll never try to slip one in there anymore. These dogs have such a desperate need to please, I think they could be trained fairly easily. That is surprising that the breeder even admitted that the dog wasn’t housebroken at ten months, I wonder if there is an obedience class that would be helpful.</p>
<p>I’m sorry, but I can’t get past the fact that the dog has a UTI!</p>
<p>Before you start trying every method under the sun to housebreak this dog, talk to your vet about the connection between UTI and incontinence. This is very much a “chicken and the egg” situation, where not being allowed to pee often enough could have been what caused the UTI, and now the UTI is causing even more frequent urination.</p>
<p>Why would you expect to be able to train a dog that isn’t healthy???</p>
<p>^^^^
This. Get the dog well first, then worry about the incontinence.</p>
<p>i highly suspect that the bedding still has traces of urine on it. your might NOT be able detect it with your nose, but it is there. throw them out. the moment you get your dog from the breeder, you committed to taking care of it for better or for worse.</p>
<p>MommaJ --have you tried those pee-pads they make for dogs? my last dog took to using one immediately in her old age. She was blind and too infirm to last through the night, but she knew right away what the pee pad was for and was very good about using it. Of course I put it in a spot that was not too far from where she slept, so she didn’t have far to go.</p>
<p>I am so sad that the op wants to give back a dog for a little bit of pee. The dog is sick. Let it get well. And do you actually walk dog and exercise it? Or just take it out to do its business?</p>
<p>How many hours is it crated everyday? Seems the dog knows to pee outside as they are scratching at the door. </p>
<p>The dog is leaking a bit. It’s not peeing all over the house. It seems pretty house trained to me.</p>
<p>A sign of uti is leakage. So to want to get rid of a puppy seems a bit harsh to say the least.</p>
<p>Just makes me cringe</p>
<p>No sign that OP is doing this but I know people who do it so I’ll say - do not reprimand dogs for accidents. Only reward when they do the right thing.</p>
<p>Get the dog well first. It took me 2 long frustrating years to housebreak my Siberian Husky. My husband was too through with this dog. But I stuck it out. He would just dribble a little bit of pee here and there and in his cage, But would also got outside. This went on for a long time. I finally went to a behaviorist and he said my dog had separation anxiety. He put him on Paxil for one month and it did the trick. It Calmed him down. Stopped peeing and that really worked.</p>
<p>
It’s not peeing that’s the problem in her case–if taken out every 4 or 5 hours, she manages not to go inside. But she has no ability to control her bowels at all, isn’t aware that she needs to go or has gone. It’s related to general weakness in her hindquarters, probably kind of some pressure on her spinal cord. But given her very advanced age (typical life span for a Lab is 10-12 years–she’s closing in on 15), we see no point is subjecting her to tests and procedures when she seems pretty content and, with a doggy NSAID, pain free. There’s no way we would put her through surgery or use powerful drugs with serious side effects, like steroids. Her vet doesn’t disagree. And if things progress to the point where she can’t get up and walk, we’ll know she’s at the end of a long and happy life.</p>
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<p>I’m sorry that you can’t see that I don’t want to live in a house that has an undercurrent of urine smell for the next however many years. If it’s the UTI, then hopefully we’re within a week of it being treated and over with. But what ticks me off is what someone said upthread - that the breeders were somehow hinting that there was something ‘off’ about the dog in that it hadn’t been properly house broken; their parting comment, though, was, “But I’m sure it’ll solve itself when he’s been in your home and adjusted in a couple of weeks.”</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, the dog would go back to the breeder, and we’re the ones who would be out of the money. The breeder has the legal right to re-home the dog if they choose to do so, which I think they probably would. The breeder also told us as long as we had a fenced-in back yard for him to run, he wouldn’t necessarily need to be walked daily. In fact, when I do walk him, he doesn’t stop to pee that much, well, as much as our previous dog would, and I can’t remember when was the last time he pooped while on a walk, although I’m always prepared with a bag if he does. </p>
<p>I’m getting the message from several people that we need to wait out the UTI treatment. I’m supposed to take him back in right after he finishes his antibiotics in another week and get him rechecked. But I just somehow am now feeling duped and taken by the breeder. They themselves have about six Cavaliers, so they’re used to their house smelling like dog, but that’s not what I bought into with just one dog - sorry seahorsesrock if my take on the situation is offensive to you, but everyone has their own tolerances and limitations to having pets, and this is one that I can’t get passed if curing the UTI or any other underlying problem doesn’t take care of it.</p>
<p>I also would be a bit suspicious of the breeder saying the dog wasn’t quite housebroken yet. One of those things that you might think won’t be an issue when they get used to your house, but if a breeder can’t housebreak a dog, there might be something wrong. I’d also be suspicious that maybe that was the real reason that they still had the dog at 10 months, no matter what they claimed. Maybe it had been returned already.</p>
<p>Perhaps the dog does have a weak bladder and can’t last long without peeing. Cavaliers don’t need to be walked all the time, like you say, though they love it. It sounds like you have been having the dog take obedience classes, which is a lot more than we did. I think our dogs just trained us to do their bidding. But if the dog has a problem, more than a temporary one, that you just can’t fix and can’t live with, I do agree that you should consider giving it back to the breeder. It’s not like it’s going back to the pound. Better sooner than later, and if you’re annoyed with the dog, it would be better off with another owner. And I think you should get your money back, since the breeder seemed to know there was a problem. If it can’t be worked out.</p>
<p>My sister has two Cavaliers. One she bought from a breeder and took him home at about 10 weeks. He was quickly housebroken.</p>
<p>The other she adopted at about 18 months from Craigslist. He was adopted by that family from a rescue group. He obviously had not been trained, either in the potty expectations or in how to act in a loving home.</p>
<p>Fast forward six months and he is now much calmer. He still has occasional potty accidents and has a tendency to get into more than his brother ever did. But my sis loves them both.</p>
<p>I think the difference for her is that she went in with her eyes wide open about the challenges. If the dog had been with a breeder, she wouldn’t have expected some of the behavior issues she’s seen.</p>
<p>I guess my point is that there may be nothing wrong with the dog other than the “nurture” received in the first 10 months of life. Only the pet owner can determine what they can tolerate in terms of behavior.</p>
<p>He pees in his crate almost every time he’s left in there for more than two hours, but if we take his bedding out, he can hold it for at least eight hours.</p>
<p>that means that he can smell his prior accidents on the bedding. Washing doesn’t get it all out unless you wash with a lot of white vinegar…and that may not be enough.</p>
<p>Get a female dog over to your backyard and have her pee in a designated area. That will become your male dog’s toilet area.</p>
<p>I hear you, teriwtt. I am a total dog lover. But my dogs never get up on the furniture, they are housebroken, and they do not jump on people or charge the door when I open it. Except for Will, The Perfect Dog, whom I trained to sit, down, stay, come, and heel off lead using both voice commands and hand signals by the time he was six months old, they haven’t been perfect! 
But they’ve been pretty good. It’s a matter of putting the needed time into the dog to achieve the things that are deal-breakers for YOU. Some need more than others</p>
<p>I’ve observed that people who have little dogs often let them get away with behavior that would get a German Shepherd put down: jumping. clawing, snapping, incontinence, you name it. A friend of mine had a Yorkie that terrified our toddlers, neither of whom were afraid of my German Shepherd. The Yorkie not only snapped and barked in their faces, he jumped up and knocked her child flat on the hard floor whenever he tried to stand and walk. It really astonished me that someone would put up with it. He also consistently peed in his crate. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>In the case of your guy, it sounds like the UTI thing is a problem, but that the people with whom the dog was living also did not put much, if any, time into him. If I were you, in addition to the training and treatment of the medical condition, I would take him out to pee frequently, not wait until he asks. Not only would it make him more comfortable, it would reinforce good housebreaking habits. Right now, he’s probably somewhat confused, but obviously trying to do the right thing.</p>
<p>Gee maybe the crate makes him nervous and scared. He can hold it for hours outside of the crate. Yet you say he’s not housebroken? Does he pee all over the house? No seems he pees in the crate which is causing him stress.</p>
<p>The crate seems to be the issue. Give the dog to a good rescue group who will find a family that understands the issues here. That’s what this poor puppy deserves.</p>
<p>I have a good friend who got 2 golden retriever puppies at the same time; the female turned out to be very difficult to housebreak, turned out to have a congenital.problem that caused her to leak urine. The breeder offered to take her back, but my friend was reluctant because she liked her, and she was worried about what would happen to her . 2 surgeries later (expensive!) The dog is still “leaky” but my friend just deals with it. I have to admit i greatly admire my friend’s commitment, but don’t know if i could have done it.</p>
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