Hi All,

Hoping someone can steer me in the right direction. I’m having some issues with house training my 10 week old Japanese Spitz. I will try to explain my situation. I will apologize now if I have put in too much information.

I bought him home at 6 weeks of age; he seemed to settle in very well and didn’t miss his mum or the breeder. As I had 5 weeks off work I figured this was a great time to get a dog. I started off buy putting him in the corner of the living room where he could see everything that was going on, he had a cage about 4 square meters in size and had all required thing in there with him, basket, food, water, toys etc. Initially I put paper on the bottom and a couple of soft towels.

For the first 2 weeks I took him outside as much as possible, every time he did his business outside I would praise him. Then he would come back in side and go in his cage. When he got to 8 weeks of age I took him to puppy school and found out that he should be getting a treat every time he does his business outside. Therefore from this point forward he got a treat every time he did outside.

Obviously he had accidents inside, in his pen and around the house when he was let out. Occasionally he would start to walk towards the door, or even on a couple of occasions bark at the door, I would let him out and after a few minutes of sniffing around he would do what he needed to do and would get praise and a treat for it. I’ve made a concerted effort to always give him a treat for doing his business outside.

The problem is that he still seems to do stuff inside the house. Today I took him outside as soon as he woke up, he did some stuff outside for which he got a treat and praised for then we went back inside. 2 minutes later he had pooed inside over the floor! He seems to be showing signes that he knows he needs to do it outside however allot of the time he just goes where he stands.

To make it even more difficult I’ve gone back to work now so he is locked up in the dining room all day as you can imagine when I get home there is a fair bit of cleaning that needs to occur.

I’m really hoping someone can tell when where I’m going wrong, please help.

Kind regards
Marten