With adult dogs, just like with a puppy, you need to supervise 100 percent of the time when they are indoors, until the habit of waiting to relieve themselves until they get outside is firmly established…
Confinement of some sort is necessary to keep the dog from making mistakes which will form the wrong habits on housebreaking. A crate is the size of a dog's bed, and dogs have a natural instinct to keep the bed clean.
It's really a great service to a dog to teach him to rest calmly in a crate, even if you only use it for training and then put it away in the closet to save for emergencies. Dogs have to rest in crates when they are in for veterinary care, and other situations.
When the dog goes outside during housetraining, you need to go with the dog, every time, so you can praise at the right moment. This is a lot of work, too. But in the process, you get the dogs understanding what you want...
Make sure all spots in the house where the dog might have relieved himself have been cleaned in the right manner to tell his keen sense of smell and doggy instincts that the house is not a bathroom. If you don't do this, the scent he can smell – even though you can't smell it – will draw him back to use the spot again….
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