Dog doing poo poo

[Plankton]

Greetings , ive come to this forum with a problem i hope somone can help me with.
My problem is this ,my dad loves his lawn and his golden retriever loves to poo on it.Its not an entirely big problem at the moment but the thing is the dog gets hit to try discourage him from doing it again ,although he does do it again.So the hits the dog recieves is not only now pointless but cruel.
The designated poo area is up a few stairs further into the backyard on sand.
He is a lovely dog we got from the rspca ,he has been majorly abused most of his life before coming here.He has major anxiety and can be frustrating to deal with at times.

Help getting riley to do poo poo's in designated poo poo area would be much apreciated.

Thankyou

 

[Saeleofu]

Lead him out to the designated poop area each and every time you take him outside, and praise him lavishly when he finally does poop there. Don't give him the opportunity to poop on the sand. After a while he will get the message, and you can let him out (with supervision) to go potty on his own again.

Essentially, you're trying to do the same thing you do when you housebreak a dog - teach it to go in a designated area, and not in an unwanted area. The only difference is both areas are outside, they're just different surfaces.

 

[Romy]

Sal has some great advice. What helped our dog learn not to poo on the sidewalk was to take his poo and instead of putting it in the garbage, put it in the corner of the yard we wanted him to use. Some dogs are happier to poop somewhere that already has a pile.

Edit: your dad needs to understand that not only is it cruel to hit the dog for pooing on the lawn, the dog is learning NOTHING from it except that he gets hit when standing next to poop.

Dogs, unless you catch them in the act will not associate punishment with what they did in the past. Even if it was 2 or 3 minutes before. Hitting him may cause Riley to think that poop is bad, and make him afraid to poop when people are looking. This will make it very hard to potty train him outside. I fostered a german shepherd who had been punished for accidents in her previous home, and she was so scared to poop on walks I had to get a thirty foot line to start with so she could walk around the corner or hide in a bush where she felt safe so she could go to the bathroom. Otherwise she would hold it for days.

If he argues with you about it just point out that so far it isn't working, so there's no use hitting Riley over it.

 

[Plankton]

Cheers guys . The thing is tho he stays outside so its kinda hard to catch him doing poo while were all at work.
He usually poo's in the designated poo area 65.3% of the time .Its just that on the ocasion he does do it he suffers the consequences.

 

[Saeleofu]

Can you put a kennel run in the yard? If you put it in a safe area, he won't poo on the lawn while you're gone, and when you're home you can work on making sure he goes in the right spot.

Or you can leave the dog inside in a crate when you're gone.

 

[Plankton]

leaving him in a crate seems the easyiest solution , ill just run with that.

 

[Lolas Dad]

The other thing you can do is pick up the poop right away so it does not have time to damage the lawn. That of course would mean that you would have to be outside with him when he does need to relieve himself.

 

[Saeleofu]

However, picking up the poop won't prevent damage if the dog has diarrhea, or if there is residue left, or if the dog urinates on the lawn.