House training a kennel dog

[Moobli]

My new lad is now 8 months and will be coming to live with us on Sunday (excited! ). Anyhow he has always lived in a kennel and so has never had to be house trained.

My feelings are that initially he can live in one of our kennel/runs until he has settled and I will slowly integrate him into the pack. However, all my dogs are house dogs and I don't really want this lad to be any different. So, the question is, which is the best way to house train an older dog like this?

I am assuming I will just go back to basics and treat him as though he were an 8 week old pup - so take him outside after food, sleep, play etc and praise when he goes outside and ignore/clean up when he goes inside. I have had a couple of older dogs from rescue before and they were also both kennel dogs but they were older than this chap, and just seemed to be naturally clean. Here's hoping this little boy is too

[Stuart]

I am guessing that he would probably rather do any mess outside anyway, so it might be easiler than you think,.. just keep your eye on him

If I am wrong, then I agree the only other thing to do is just as you discribe.

Being more of an adult dog, he will be able to hold it longer than a pup, so if you let your dogs out [ maybe a bit more often than normal] the new lad will follow them and take his lead from them

[Moobli]

Some good points there, thanks Stuart.

My dogs tend to spend much of their day outside (with me) in any event, so hopefully it will be a doddle

[Sal]

[Maddie]

If he's clean in his kennel just now, he might well be clean in the house. Good luck, he's abrasive looking boy.

[Moobli]

Thanks all - fingers crossed he is a quick learner. All my other dogs are fully housetrained and so he should learn from them!

[Maddie]

whoops, I wrote abrasive up there. Meant to read "a great", smart phone isn't that smart afterall.

[Moobli]

Haha I did wonder, but thought it was just a term used up here to mean braw or great

[Raven]

Good luck with your new boy. Logan was a kennel dog, we got him in June when he was 2.5 years old and he's been pretty good. We do have to be careful with new things in the house though as left unsupervised he will cock his leg up them. I wasn't too happy when he peed over some of my paintings I'd just collected from a gallery

[DelsMum]

You may find, as I did, that there is a little confusion to start with. Jack spent a lot of time in a kennel with a run. He used to do his business in the run part so when I put his bed in the kitchen, he thought the living room was his new run! Only had 2 accidents though so they work it out quite quickly!