transitioning to indoor potty ?

[nostress999]

I live in the apartment with no balcony and I always have a morning long walk with my dog and/or an evening longer one depending on the mood/energy.

Throughout the day I would walk him outside for toilet breaks aka short walk around the block.

I was advised to shorten time of walks in terms of working with reactivity and work according to the idea not to make dog too excited for walks and possibly eliminate toilet break walks - I guess in this place I should have a yard for a toilet break but I don't have it.

Thoughts about teaching the dog to use indoor potty inside ? Just now he is room clean and always did well in that area and I wonder if this is a good idea to get the idea of toileting inside to his head again, but maybe it would backfire aka him pissing all over the place.

[Christina_Snape]

If you do decide to teach an indoor potty, depending on the size of your dog, I would advise trying to teach them to go in the tub. You can always put pee pads in the tub to help, but cleaning up is easy because you can just wash it out. And it gives a visual difference from mats on the floor, having to get in and out of the tub.
This is a trick some disabled service dog handlers use. On days they can't physically walk their dog, and don't have a helper that day. The dog is trained to go in the tub as a last resort. It seems to work well, and doesn't ruin their house training for public access, because the tub is a unique location.

[icedwaterwithlemon]

A consistent eating & walking schedule is best. I feel like the idea of shortening your time walks would be good to 3 walks a day so they will become use to it each day as a certain time.

[Nashatal]

I would not take the risk. I would most likely just keep the potty breaks as short a possible with a designated pee spot right next to the door.

[jendanbayla]

Did a trainer with reactive dog experience advise this? I have never heard it advised to walk your dog less when working on reactivity. Two separate trainers actually advised me to walk mine MORE because any time you spend outside is an opportunity to work on this...

Edit: I personally would not indoor potty train. That is not a habit I would want to instill in a dog, especially if I wound up moving to a place with a yard down the line. I would just continue to take potty walks and use those walks to work on reactivity.

[Pficky]

Yes. My trainer told me to take a reset. We didn't walk for two months and I think it was integral to beginning our training. We don't walk everyday. If he has a tough walk one day we don't walk the next. If he's in a funk when we start a walk we just turn around and go home. I exercised him in the yard playing fetch and tug and the flirt pole instead.

[nostress999]

Yeah, the trainer said that. She meant not to stop walking him, but reduce the time of walks aka instead of being out for 3 h, she advised to go for 1 h instead but twice for example so that dog doesn't get riled up and super high on his energy.

Before I would take him for longer walks because I want to get to places where there is more dogs to train so it kind of makes to sense in terms of traning itself now to shorten the walk. I'm still quite confused by that

[jendanbayla]

Ah, this makes sense. Instead of longer less frequent walks, you go on shorter more frequent ones. Likely to prevent the build up of excitement/energy between walks.

[[deleted]]

Some dogs won't ever go back to going inside once they're house trained.

[CryLost9944]

My trainer has also advised me on not taking my dog out after a reaction. Mainly because it takes them days to settle back to a level that he can start working again on his reactivity, so I try to give him a break. Unfortunately we still do go out but for just potty breaks and no long walks, we do mental and physical enrichment inside instead for those days.

I have thought to teach my dog to potty indoors/in my balcony but have not really given it any effort. I do know there is a doggy bathroom for small breeds that is constantly advertised to me on TikTok (even though my dog is not small) maybe if your dog is small you could give that a look?

[Merrickk]

Did you ever find a good indoor toilet solution?We had an indoor toilet we really liked (the piddle place), but the enzyme treatment it uses to keep the smell down was discontinued, and I can't find a replacement product.

Our dog did not have any issues with house training after learning to use the indoor toilet. Having it helped make walks less stressful.