My puppy is dumb

The Standard Schnauzer is a working or utility dog and is the original breed of the three sizes. Standard Schnauzers are generally a robust, squarely built, medium-sized dog with aristocratic bearings.
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zeta1454
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Re: My puppy is dumb

Post by zeta1454 »

Just some additional points re your latest post:

Your schnauzer cannot know how long you are going to be away when you leave her in the crate and, although she did not pee on the long confinement of 6 hours, the length of time she was left may have un-nerved her when you went out on the next occasion. If you were randomly confined in a small room with no idea of when you were going to be let out, you might find that stressful, even if the usual time was not very long at all.

The fact that you feel that your pride in the training regime you carried out has been undermined by your schnauzer occasionally peeing in her crate is something almost everyone who has raised dogs over the years has probably encountered. It can be hard to accept but dogs are not machines that will behave to order as long as you follow the manual, they are living creatures like humans and can be just as inconsistent. Suddenly going out for 6 hours after usually only being out for 2 hours could be viewed as a random inconsistency on your part to your dog.

Leaving a dog for hours in a crate through the day actually is not good and could be regarded as abuse in many countries. The fact that others do this does not make it acceptable and, although you say that you rarely do it, it is surely better if you can leave her un-crated when you are going to be away for such a length of time.

The plan to give your girl lots of treats and praise when she does not pee in her crate requires a huge leap of faith in the reasoning brain power of your dog IMO. How is she going to relate something she has not done (pee in the crate) to you rewarding her with "party time " ? It will just reinforce the inconsistency of your behaviour if you randomly give out praise and treats on some occasions when you come home and sometimes give nothing. How is she going to connect the "rewards" to something that she did not do?

From reading your previous posts on this subject, I do think that your obsession and frustration over what you see as a house training issue is affecting your schnauzer. There have clearly been times that have indicated that your girl is "house trained" but she has developed a behavioural/psychological reaction due to stress around the whole "peeing" issue. At a training class we attended years ago there was a very dedicated and concerned dog owner whose dog had apparently developed anorexia - her 8 year old child also had anorexia.... were the dog and the child really suffering from eating disorders from some health issue or was the mother/ dog owner stressing both over food and eating to the point that she had created the problem in both?

If you really cannot cope with the particular traits of the schnauzer which is not an easy breed of dog for a novice owner, you would be better finding an experienced home for her or return her to her breeder. If you are committed to giving your girl the best possible life, try to let go of the need to create the best behaved perfect dog by following a training manual. Peeing in her crate is such a minor issue in the scheme of things other than that your pride is hurt because you have not been able to modify this behaviour to date. Try not to obsess over the issue and maybe it will resolve of its own accord :)

P.S If you are using "pants " during your girl's season, or at any other time, do be sure not to leave them on her for a lengthy period of time as the pad will need changing regularly (as with a baby's nappy or incontinence pad) to avoid causing bacterial / urinary tract infection.
Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole. ~Roger Caras

Magic - Silversocks Sharade at Darksprite
Trilby - Darksprite Rosa Bud


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Pennyblack
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Re: My puppy is dumb

Post by Pennyblack »

Training accidents happen, it's a fact of life with dogs. There's really no point in getting wound up about it as it doesn't do anyone any good. Both my 20 month old and 8 month old minis sleep on my bed and neither have accidents there at nights (youngest one has slept on my bed since he was 10 weeks old). However, on Friday night, I forgot to shut the door to my lounge and push the bedroom door 'to' before I turned out the light. When we went downstairs yesterday morning, I was greeted by a 'package' in the lounge.

I just cleaned it up without saying a thing to the dogs, (it would have been pointless) and got on with getting things ready for our day out. As a result, neither the dogs nor I were stressed and we had a lovely day at a dog show instead.




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akuma_desu
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Re: My puppy is dumb

Post by akuma_desu »

I don't think my frustration affects her because I never get frustrated in front of her. I don't get upset or anything. I just clean the mess up and that's all. It's later when I sit down and think about everything, that I feel like I failed somewhere.

Even though schnauzers can be stubborn, rehoming her just because she sometimes pees in crate... it sounds terribly harsh. I don't hate her, I'm not trying to make a perfect dog out of her. She's my dog and I could never give her up. Like you said, things like these are normal. People often get puppy blues and get frustrated. It's just that I made a mistake of sounding too harsh on the Internet. I made myself look like a horrible owner who expects a robot, even though I'm really not a bad person.

I started taking off her "underwear" when she's crated, I just clean up the crate if there's any blood. She doesn't wear anything at all during the night. And of course I change her pads regularly. I treat the situation like I would if it was me, since anything else wouldn't be hygienic.

This is just so you know she's totally unaffected by anything :$
https://imgur.com/gallery/KYvqN

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GaryThomlinson
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Re: My puppy is dumb

Post by GaryThomlinson »

Your dog looks adorable and not 'dumb' at all. We as owners need to learn how to communicate and live with these animals, not the other way around.
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Robin black mini
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Re update

Post by Robin black mini »

Even though schnauzers can be stubborn, rehoming her just because she sometimes pees in crate
I don't think anyone suggested rehoming just because she weed in her crate ,but because you don't seem happy with the dog she is and the habits she has,based on the long hours YOU chose to crate her.
I would like to comment here,as I don't think this is a stubborn breed..but,you have to be in tune with the schnauzer ,for sure.
My other breed ,the standard. poodle ,is definitely a challenge in that they are hyper intelligent.I can definitely say the schnauzer is a match for my poodle and I respect her immensely.
If you can find a way to rub along with your schnauzer,giving her more respect ,I think things will pick up.
I would ditch the crate entirely,perhaps use a safety gate on the kitchen,but start to structure the dogs routine so that she has the opportunity to go outside and then be in a safe area to rest. Obviously you must give more than ten minutes of excercise before you leave her so she is truely tired and willing to rest.
My tiny schnauzer pup ,at eight weeks ,slept on my bed from day one...she's never wet my floor but does alert me when she needs to go outside.For my part I take her outside willingly,even at 3 am,when she wakes up and sees me go to the bathroom, and she does her business outside and we all go back to bed in under five minutes without any more drama.
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mikegoodson1
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Re: My puppy is dumb

Post by mikegoodson1 »

I know I'm going slightly off topic but we kept Oscar, our mini-Schnauzer in our kitchen/laundry area over-night or if we went out, he also had a crate in the laundry area where the door was always open for him to go in/leave when he wanted. Over-night he would be fine in the kitchen area but if we popped out in the day for even 20 minutes, he would be howling and crying incessantly, it really broke your heart. *We have a child gate across the kitchen door AND I would just like to confirm that we never left him alone in the house for more than 2 hours, that was our maximum.

By the time he was around 6-8 months old, we kept the child gate open of a night so he could choose where he slept - usually in our bedroom on the floor, then the bed :-) but if we went out, we would still put him in the kitchen with the child gate closed.

As he got a little older, around 12 months old, we decided to leave the child gate open when we went out, so he has the run of the house. It changed his behaviour immediately. He was still super pleased to see us when we came back but he no longer howled/cried whilst we were out (I know this as I have a dog-cam and our neighbours reported back too). I guess it was like telling him he was in charge of the house whilst we were out or that is what I like to believe.

At the end of the day, I know he is a dog but he is part of our family and he is treated as such.

We are all different and I guess not everyone wants their dog roaming their flat or house when they are not there (maybe a safety issue for the dog as much as being concerned about any damage to your property) but I don't think crating a dog for hours on end is a good thing to do, regardless of whether it's a one time thing or not.

I'm sorry for my original comments coming across harsh and judgemental but by your own admission, your original post may not have been worded as 'roundly' as you would have wished :-)

We all love our dogs immensely and want to do the best for them.
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akuma_desu
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Re: My puppy is dumb

Post by akuma_desu »

Bwaaaah, freaking Tapatalk. I was writing a reply and accidentally pressed Back key. Bam! Everything gone. Anyway, time to rewrite it.

Those 6 hours was the only time I personally crated her for so long and she did well. It was the next day that got my head spinning in confusion. I don't think my puppy's dumb. I just can't see where the problem lies as it's so random, so I guess that makes me the dumb one. I can't leave her uncrated because I live in a pretty small rented flat, which means a) I can't modify any part of it b) the only part I can leave her in uncrated is the small hallway, and that's not the best solution because she knows how to open doors. She tends to chew stuff that she's not supposed to. Not because she's bored, but probably because she thinks "oh that looks like a stick, I love to chew sticks".

She is never crated unless I need to go shopping, which usually doesn't take more than an hour. She sleeps in her crate with gates open over night, and it has been like that for quite some time now. I let her on the bed at around 6:30-7:00am and we get up at 7:40-8:00am when my SO leaves for work. She's not even crated every day. It's maybe a few times a week. Crate is her safeplace and she loves it. I had my family stop by yesterday as we were celebrating something. Pup played with them a bit and then went to her crate to chill and watch us. My mom dragged her out just to taks some family photos and shortly after she went back to her crate. As you can see, she's more than cool with it.

I'm not unhappy with her. Sometimes she acts like an annoying bratty teenager. But I'm mostly proud of her or our improvement. She still has some bad manners like jumping on people, but that's very hard to train out when everybody is like "but she's just a puppy, I don't mind!", and she gets too excited when shs sees other dogs - something we had made a slight progress with. I'm proud when I see that she's doing well, but I get frustrated with these random crate accidents because I don't know how to fix it. If she had accidents every time, I would know that she associated her crate with a bathroom. However, she has no accidents most of the time. I don't know what her trigger is.

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Bodee
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Re: My puppy is dumb

Post by Bodee »

I know this is an old thread but just in case anyone looks in I would like to tell you about my experience with my Standard Schnauzer Max.

I worked part time when I first brought Max into my house at 8 weeks and I took 3 weeks holiday in order to let him get used to his new surroundings and house train him. There were no "puppy pads" in these days and I just used newspapers but the miracle was he was trained in less than a week, not only that but he learned right away that an area of chips I had laid in front of the garage was his loo - so for the rest of his 15 years he never fouled the back lawn or left any poos amongst the shrubs and flowers.

Anyway all was idyllic until I went back to work. Although the breeder had offered to provide me a crate from the job lot she was ordering, I had raised a GS and an Airedale in the past without resorting to a crate so I declined.

My part time job meant I was away for 4 hours in the afternoon and Max was kept in the kitchen with his numerous toys I had bought him. I realised that leaving a puppy for that amount of time alone was hardly fair but I was retiring soon and I had realised that finding another Standard was not going to be easy in Scotland so I grabbed my chance when he became available.

So the routine was to take Max out in the garden for training and maybe a short walk before I left and then leave him to snooze for a few hours until I got back - which at first seemed to work well. However as he got a few weeks older I started to notice signs of him gnawing the kitchen units, not much but noticeable. I started to keep him out a bit longer in the mornings and that seemed to work but gradually the gnawing started again.

It was around this time I dropped a "red hot" Pyrex dish on the floor while taking it out of the oven. It landed on the cushion floor vinyl and left a burn mark about the size of a cigarette burn. I didn't think much more about it and in fact I thought I had got off easy. :)

If only. Unfortunately it was enough to attract the attention of my bored little man and he set about making "adjustments to the flooring, a little more each day. Needless to say I was not happy but I realised he was only reacting through boredom. All I could think to do was slightly longer walks and more play prior to going out and in truth other aspects of house keeping were beginning to suffer.

It was about this time that I went to work one afternoon and on arriving at my desk I was hit by the realisation I had forgot to close the kitchen/to dining/ lounge door. Needless to say little work was done that afternoon (I'm an Architect) as I fretted about the mess I was coming home to.

As I drove up to the house I could see this bearded little face sitting on the armchair watching me arrive. Oh sh-- I thought what was I going to find?
Well I opened the lounge door to a massive welcome and try as I might I could't see one thing gnawed or out of place, no pee, no poo. All he had needed was an arm chair to lie on and look out the window at the world go by to stop him from being bored.

After that, I always left him in the lounge sitting or standing up in "his" armchair watching me drive off to work.

The moral as I see it.

Now that I am without my best friend who I loved dearly, I look back and can think about how any bit of poor behaviour could justifiably be laid at my door and just how much he tried to fit in with my lifestyle and I with his, as we grew older together.

All problems can be overcome and it is important to believe your friend is trying his/her hardest to fit in and gain your approval. Don't confuse them with someone who can talk, sometimes you will confuse them or ask too much of them because you may be having a bad day or you fail to appreciate how young they are and how they are still learning. Bad behaviour is usually a sign that it is "you" who is doing something wrong.

Max went everywhere with me. He wasn't a show dog, he had a heart murmur, he fought through anal gland cancer at age 6 and rectal cancer at age 10 to the amazement of the vets. (I always put this down to his appreciating how lost I would be without him) He had one artificial ligament at age 8 and when the other back leg developed the same condition at age 12, the vet said he would be too much of a risk at his age to have another operation, so he soldiered on as was his way.

I never had a holiday as I could not bare to put him in kennels and I even stopped going to my sister's for Christmas after my brother in law said Max had scratched the wooden floor and was no longer welcome. I disputed that, as I had ensured he never ran in the house and my sister even brought out a large rug for him to cover the majority of the lounge floor. There was no way I was leaving my best friend alone at home on Christmas day.
We were only apart during his hospital stays and we could count on the fingers of two hands the days we didn't get out in his almost 15 years.
I would give anything to come down the stairs and see he had chewed a kitchen unit now.

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Re: My puppy is dumb

Post by Barbarauttley »

Thank you Boyd for telling us that lovely story of a very handsome, loving and intelligent Max. You must miss him terribly but have wonderful memories.
The point you make about dogs trying to fit in with us is so true and sometimes we expect to much from them and their understanding of us!
Lovely photos!
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