At the first sign that your mature dog is going to eliminate (excessive sniffing of a particular area), the owner should immediately take him outside.

The personality and thought process of the dog is an extremely complex mechanism. Training, whether for toilet training or teaching to sit on command, is simply a matter of communication.

There are some isolated cases where the cause of a breakdown in toilet habits in a mature dog starts as a psychological motivation, but results in a problem becoming medically motivated. An example of this would be the dog that suddenly forgets his housebreaking and urinates out of jealousy and spite.

How does a dog owner determine if his dog is getting old? How can he know that the “accident” that just happened is the result of the aging process that the dog is going through?

There is a certain element of surprise, perhaps even shock, when the owner of a perfectly trained and well-behaved adult dog suddenly steps in a puddle. “No, it can’t be!” He shrieks.