HELP! my mastador is being uber weird!

[barkergirl]

hi everyone,

so here is the scoop. i have a 2 year old mastador named copper, and he is a big dumb lug, but a really good dog until recently. he is refusing to go outside in the back yard at all and is now deficating and peeing in my house but will go outside in the front yard. up until recently he would go out no problems and would never go potty in the house. we have a dog door to the outside so he can go out whenever he wants but if he wont go outside it kinda defeats the perpose. i really have no idea why he is doing it. he is the alpha in our pack of dogs(we have 3 copper, luna(german shephard), and lola( our mix breed mutt) all of the others go outside with no issues except him. its come to the point where i have to put them all out , drag him out (which isnt easy since he weighs 150 lbs) put up a baby gate and then my night stand in front of the door which he proceeds to battering ram until he gets back inside when he has only been out for 2 minutes. i really don't know what to do. he cant go out the front, we have no fence around the front and are on a main street, and he is stupid enough to go running out into it! please help me!

[Karen]

I would take him to the vet to make sure there's nothing medically wrong. Then you can work on getting him to go back outside again. Are there any changes back there, or has anything that happened maybe spooked him? What does he like best - toys or treats? Maybe you can lure him out, and stay out there with him, until he is relaxed, and if you do that several times a day, maybe he'll get used to it.

[IRescue452]

I agree that so long as his health checks out he may have had some bad experience outside that scared him. You are going to have to go back to taking him out on a leash for a while like a puppy and rewarding him for going outside while watching him like a hawk inside. If he has a crate he may need to go into the crate if he didn't go potty outside and then try again in half an hour.

[Miranda60]

i was thinking bout same.. could be a bladde inflammation why he is peeing in the house or a bad experience in the garden.. like its said i would go like a puppytraining on a leash in the garden. succes !

[roland]

Did something spook him? I got caught in a fireworks display with my three and I just went through the same exact problem with my Greyhound Athena, after. What worked was going back to crate training. We hated to do it but that was all that worked (and we tried everything, even buying a Thundercoat). We dragged her out. ( and head leader makes this easy) and made her stay out till she made. or we ran out of time and she went in the crate. Once she made outside, she got to stay out of the crate. It took a about a week.
She still had outside fear issues, but has been getting over them, a little at a time. Now it's mostly just loud noises that scare her.