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Our 3 year old dog has started pooing in the house!

4 replies

Nospringflower · 29/08/2014 07:07

Our 3 year old female collie has never pooed in the house apart from once the day we got her. This week on 3 nights ( not consecutive) she has pood in the house. Once directly beside our guinea pig cage, another in the hall and last night upstairs on our landing. We have never seen our dog come upstairs and as far as we know she doesn't like our open stairs. There is carpet upstairs and wooden floors downstairs.

She is very territorial in the garden and poos in a circle round where she sits. There are foxes come through and we have always thought it relates to scaring them off - pooing at the hole they enter the front garden for example and before a fox killed our hens she had pod outside their chicken coop - I thought afterwards the fox must have been trying to get in.

Does anyone have any ideas what could be going on? We are baffled as it is so out of the ordinary. At first I thought there might be a mouse but her going upstairs is so unheard of! Thinking I might have to beta crate again but aware that is not really tackling the problem.

She normally barks to get outside and has done this in the night to chase foxes - don't know if she has barked to poo before but guessing so.

Thanks for any advice.

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SpicyBear · 29/08/2014 12:08

I would take her to the vets to start with to rule out or in a physical cause. Has anything changed at home or with regard to her routine recently?

It makes sense she would toilet upstairs if she doesn't usually go up there as she is going out of her living area to do it.

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Excitedforxmas · 29/08/2014 12:12

I would start treating her when she does it outside and lots of praise. Wouldn't go rushing off to the vets if that's the only problem.

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ffallada · 29/08/2014 12:23

I have to agree with spicy and say that a trip to the vets to rule out a physical cause first is necessary.

If there is not a physical problem then something may have changed to upset her - as you know collies are extremely sensitive to their environment.

We have had great success with the DAP plug in spray - our dcollie has chilled out in the house. (We did not have any success with the DAP collar which was a colossal waste of money.)