Hello! Kodiak is new to our family; he was adopted from a local shelter on the day after Christmas. So far everything is going great and he has been incredibly well behaved.....well in most ways. We have been struggling with night time accidents.

Pretty much every morning we wake up to a nice surprise on the floor. We tried a crate but he freaked out and spent the entire night shaking it and trying to break out. We have tried going for a long walk immediately before bed and even getting up at 2am to take him out. We have a second dog (a lab husky mix) who is trained to ring a bell to go out and Kodiak has picked up the bell amazingly well when he has to pee... unfortunately it seems the only time he poops is while we are fast asleep and he makes no effort to wake us!

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Edit: Forgot to add.... Kodiak is about 1 - 1.5 years, he currently eats in the morning and around 6pm

With rescues especially, you really are going to have to start back at square one with potty training. Take him out more often, clean thoroughly, and be patient.

I would try confining him to a space. If he can't do a crate right now, how about a bathroom? Some place that has easy cleanup? In the meantime, I would start crate training him. Create positive associations with the crate (see the Crate Training Sticky) and slowly teach him that it's not a place to freak out in.

Hope this helps! Welcome to the forum

our girl was having this issue when we would close them in to the upstairs at night when we went to be. out in the hall with the old carpet she would poo and or pee in the same spot like once a week. we replaced the carpet sealed the floor before the new carpet and confined them to our bedroom at night and not the hall. we have not had an accident since, they know the bedroom is as much our room as theirs and since they don't mess in there area the bedroom stays clean. as tori also stated your boy is new to your home and it will take some time for him to adjust. just clean clean clean that spot with pee/poo remover.

I had a similar thing with peeing but it didn't happen until month later when a friend came to stay with us for a couple of weeks. Ginger would pee right outside the guest room as if marking her territory.

As stated previously, be patient, take him out more frequently, and get a cleaner that has enzymes to eliminate odors and stains. I used Simple Solution Stain+Odor Remover and it works pretty well on both pee and poop.

In addition to what has already been said, usually you can time their bowel movements pretty well on a set feeding schedule. Perhaps adjusting your feeding schedule will help adjust the BM's to a different time if the above suggestions do not work. Might sound like a weird question, but how many BM's does your sibe have per day and how much do you feed at each feeding? Does your dog ever have a BM outside or does he save it for the middle of the night? Are you feeding kibble or raw?

Truthfully you may just have to wake up in the middle of the night to let him out. Odin is terrified of the crate and will scream the entire night (in the beginning) he had a terrible marking issue so it was a crappy first couple of weeks i'll tell you that.

But stick with it and it should be easy to fix. Constantly letting him out and reward him for any outside pottying. With Odin I actually stopped letting him mark anything that wasn't a tree or a bush. I still have to do it, but it's really helping him to learn that he isn't allowed to mark anything except stuff outside.