puppy lost control of toilet habits!!!!

[keza]

my sixteen week old german shepard was pooing and weeing perfectly on her paper for ages but for the last two weeks has completley ignored the paper and is messing every where and anywhere.i walk her for ages every day and dont feed her to late at night but she is still doing it.has anyone got any ideas on how to stop her doing this and to start going on the paper again?.

[Illyria54]

You have to go back to square 1 I'm afraid, take her out in the garden for a wee & poo after every meal,drinking,waking up, and after playing, I find that using paper is very confusing for any puppy, it is actually telling them that it is ok to go to the toilet in the house! I train my dogs to 'perform' on command, I take them into the garden and say "be quick", when you first begin this wait until they are actually performing and say it in a calm friendly voice, believe me they soon get the hang of it! If you find a mess in the house, just calmly clear it up without saying anything to your dog then take her outside and stay with her until she has a wee or whatever, don't just leave her in the garden on her own. I hope that at this age you are not walking her too far as she is too young! at this age she should be going out on the lead for no more than 10 minutes at a time 2-3 times each day so a total of no more than 30 minutes and not all at once, their bones and tendons are very vulnerable at this age and she shouldn't be getting long walk until she is at least 12-15 months old, my GSD puppy is 10 months old and she gets around 45 minutes each day and she is still not allowed up and down stairs as they can cause themselves all kinds of damage!
I have kept GSD's for a very long time and have 3 at the moment, and a Border Collie.

[orange-gnome]

Just to say that I agree with the last post about training to go on paper inside the house. Dogs don't like to go inside their 'den' which is your house and so at this age you should be letting her out regularly and pre-empt when she'll need to go which is like Illyria says, after eating, eating or other than that every couple of hours (at least). It's tough going for a while but it soon pays off and they learn very quickly to go outside and she'l soon be letting you know when she needs to go.
Look for signs like sniffing around on the floor, turning round in circles etc