All healthy adult dogs can be housetrained, but you’ll need commitment.

By Mardi Richmond

Meet “Mollie,” a three-and-a-half-year-old terrier who lives in Aptos, California. (Her name has been changed to protect the guilty!) Mollie is a great dog, except for one not-so-small issue: Mollie is not housetrained. She does not know when or where she is supposed to go. Left to her own devices, Mollie would eliminate in the living room, the bedroom, on top of a pile of clean laundry, and, yes, even in her own crate.

Crates, X-pens, and baby gates will be your biggest allies in the campaign to housetrain your dog. Access to the entire house must be earned, slowly, as the dog exhibits reliability.

Mollie’s housetraining issues, however extreme, are easily explained. The first several years of Mollie’s life were spent in a poorly run breeding kennel. She was not only never formally housetrained, but also forced to urinate and defecate…

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