Clean at night - advice needed

danda

danda

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I have a little rescue dog. 7 years old, a French bulldog. She was taken away from her owner as badly beaten and neighbours complained. She does not walk correctly as spinal cord injured. She is much better, stronger and happier but after a year she is still not always clean at night.

She is fed twice a day with 75 grams each time ( her weight is now 10 kgs), food is Orijen adult. She is fed between 9 and 9.30 in the morning and 3.30 and 4 in the afternoon. She has several outings in the day' the lasr being at 10 pm.

Most days now she is fine but every so often she messes in the house.

Would it help to change the feeding time ? I try to always do the same thing at the same time so she is adjusted to this regime thinking that would help but it is not perfect and after a year I thought it would be.

I believe dry food takes 10 to 12 hours to be fully digested so mabe I need to feed later?

I am getting really upset by this as do not see how to improve things for her.
Thanks for any constructive advice.
 
As CC says, I wonder if her bowel doesn't always register it is full? Or incontinence? Does she get up and poo in a certain place?
 
Could try one feed a day but need to know what time that should be for optimal chance of that working. Will see with vet if a scan of some sort could tell if any thing physically the matter. Another rather odd thing and one I have not seen in another dog is that she does not stop walking when she poos, she just keeps moving along. No idea if this is significant or not.

She is not the only dog I have so have to be careful when changing feeding times to not impact others.

Thanks for this advice but would really want to know what time would be the best, she is always hungry but has put on a kilo since she came and now looks good. Mustn't put on more since her back legs are wonky.
 
Before changing her feeding regime have her checked over by your vet just to ensure there isn't a physical reason for her not being clean overnight.

If nothing is untoward then try feeding her later in the evening. My dogs are fed anywhere between 5-7pm (sometimes later depending on what we are doing that day) - we don't have strict feeding times here.
 
TBH your feeding times sound fine, sounds like she probably has some nerve damage resulting in incontinence. Has she always done this? If not has she seen your vet recently?
 
She does not pee in the house during the night and poos much less frequently than before. I think she was never trained at all (according to the rescue people she was with an marginal alcoholic) maybe fed sporadically and beaten up when she messed or got in the way' but that is just supposition on my part. So most of the time she can hold ok from 10.15 pm to 7.30 am . It is just so frustrating not to be able to overcome this last obstacle. Could it be in her mind as well as the possibility of a physical problem? I am not changing anything until I understand better how her digestion works. I thought I had it sorted but suddenly not so good again.
 
It could be that she was roared at for going inside and she now believes that getting 'caught' is to be avoided.
To be fair, she is seven, has had a rough life and she may have physical and mental issues around toileting. That's not going to be fixed in a year and it might not ever be fixed. She's not doing it deliberately.
Try not to see it as 'frustrating' or an 'obstacle'...it just 'is'. If it's a cleaning up problem for you then I'd keep her on a tiled area overnight or put some sort of surface or sheeting down
 
Might be interesting to set your alarm for 6.00am for a week to see if that helps.

I recently had a little poodle staying who, despite being let out between 10.30 and 11.00pm, always needed a morning toilet at around 6.00am.
 
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