Please help!
My husband and I adopted a 11 month old mini poodle (named Eddie) in February only to find that he has serious house training issues...We crate trained him right away, he learned "bedtime" and since then always goes straight to his crate. It was immediately hard to time when to take him out because he simply will not eat at scheduled eating times, and I had to break down and leave his food out. At first I kept him on a leash tied to me at all times, but even then he would sneak squirts inside (that I would find later because we had really dark carpet). I have never been able to tell when he will go...sometimes he would go outside (with lots of praise and treats) and then again immediately once we get back in. Anyways eventually we starting leaving the door open at all times and he started going outside on his own with no problems for awhile.
The biggest problem came when we had to move to an apartment last month...I knew right away that if he had any excuse to go inside that he would. So we put up a sliding glass doggie door and I trained him to go through it easily. I bought "potty grass" online for the balcony/patio and put it out for him. Immediately he started using it and I breathed a sigh of relief. It worked about a week. Suddenly he would have a "big poop" in the morning but let a little squirt out in the dining room area in the afternoon. And as always I clean with the enzyme cleaner. It's been getting worse, at first it was just a tiny bit of poop and now it's pee too...my mother in law suggested putting a piece of doggy grass/sod on some plastic lining in the dining room where he seems to like to go so he would associate the grass with "potty." He hasn't gone on it once. This last week has been terrible. I came home from work in the morning and found probably 6 little poops and maybe 4 pees in the dining room. And the space that he's using is gradually widening out into the living room. Our roommates have been irritated to say the least, and after they found the fiasco in the dining room the other day it's been hard to keep sticking up for our little guy. My husband is threatening to send him to our in-laws. I'm at my wits end. I made sure that I had time when we got him to supervise him during the day but now it's impossible. I work night shift and sleep during the day...and I can't bear to lock him up in the crate the entire day when he is confined at least to our room now at night also.
Please help I don't want to lose him...