Agoraphobic dog?

[candycat]

OK, I doubt it's real agoraphobia (sp) but Candy hates to go outside. It's all I can do to get her to go pee in the backyard. If she sees a leash, forget about it, she literally runs upstairs to hide under my bed. Once she's on the leash she's fine and obeys perfectly but she does NOT want to go on walks, in the car - even out in the backyard, like I said. She's a golden so she's pretty big. There's nothing scary outside for her, we live in a quiet neighborhood with a fenced in yard and she doesn't shy away from anything. We adopted her earlier this summer and she's a lovely girl. She was an outside dog (kenneled) before so she's only been in the house with us, and I guess she likes it. A lot.

At first housetraining was rough but now she hasn't had any accidents in about a month (knock on wood). She doesn't signal to go out but as long as I take her out for a while she will go off and do her thing. *TO this day* I haven't seen her pee or make a mess; she is SO discreet it's ridiculous. Our backyard is the size of a dime but I still have never seen her "go". But anyway, in order to let her out I have to "trick" her into going - she shadows me and won't go 3 feet away from me during the day, so I have to pretend to go outside, then when she leaves the door I step back inside and she will give me a sad look and go off and do her thing and come back. But this is getting old; I don't want to trick her every last time to go outside. Especially with winter coming. I need her to signal to go out - but she HATES going out, so she isn't going to do it.

I try doing fun things with her outside. I've tried giving her treats outside, just hanging out with her outdoors... nothing. Candy just sits at the door and whines to go in - unless she is on a leash, in which case she's better - but she's still not happy about being outside, she's just resigned to obedience, I guess.

So, I mean. I guess my questions are:

1.) Is she likely to get over this with time?
2.) How can I get her to like being outside?
3.) How can I get her to SIGNAL to go outside?

TIA.

[greenmulberry]

Is your yard fenced in that you could give her a nice bone, or if you do not do bones, a kong toy stuffed with peanut butter, in the yard, and maybe you can sit in the yard with her and read a book while she eats her treat?

I see this happen in rescue dogs sometimes. They usually get over it once they gain confidence. Anything you can do to help her gain her confidence will help, like teaching her tricks using a very positive methods.

[Doodlebugsmom]

I'd probably get her used to the leash by using praise and treats, if necessary, to help her get a positive association with the leash. After you get her leashed, I would encourage her (again with treats) out the door. Give her a command, such as "Go potty!" and when she does it, praise like mad and give her a treat. I realize this is probably time-consuming, but it may help your pup overcome this.

[Ola_]

She probably didn't get a whole lot of socialization in her previous life. For the leash, I'd just put a light 4' lead on her in the house and have her drag it around. You can pick it up randomly, praise her or treat, then drop it and go about your business. Once she's used to that I'd probably just randomly clip the leash on (when you're not going outside), treat, and unclip. Dogs are good at picking up patters such as when you're actually going to go outside but this should take care of some of the initial resistance anyway.

I personally don't think it's reasonable to expect a dog to be outside, on their own, and enjoy it very much. Sure, some do (I have one who does but it's only cause she can cause trouble out there, lol). But really the fun in being outside is having someone to interact with. So if you're out there playing frisbee or throwing a tennis ball she'll probably like it, but just to put her out and go back inside, that wouldn't be a goal for me. And if you keep putting her outside and leaving regularly she will probably like outside less, not more. Especially if you're having potty issues I would encourage you to be out there with her, either playing with her or teaching her a potty word so she can potty on command. The potty word is super useful when you're in situations she really doesn't want to be in, like a strange place, noisy road, or bad weather (I use it all the time, one of my dogs is convinced she will melt in the rain).

For signalling to potty, you can try teaching her to use the potty bells. Keep in mind that while some dogs have pretty clear signals that they need to go out, others really don't. One of my dogs will jump on the door outside when she needs to potty. The other will stare at me instead - it took me a long time to figure that out! And I have to say, even my "obvious signal" dog too a while to start doing this after we got her so maybe give her some time. For many dogs it's just a matter of getting them out there on a regular schedule. The predictability of having a routine is usually something they enjoy also. Our dogs do 3 outings per day, but for a new to our home dog I'd probably do 4 or more (depending on how housetraining is going).