How to stop our 1 year old cocker pooping in same place upstairs?

Our one year old cocker has developed a habit of going up to our room and pooping on the landing outside the door.(this is two floors up!)My OH is going nuts! He has plenty of opportunities to go outside and is completely clean inside the house everywhere else.It is as if he has decided it is alright for him to poop there.

I have cleaned the whole area with a pet liquid to take any scent away.We also try to keep him downstairs so that he does not have opportunity.This is hard however with three children in the house.

I think this is a behavioural issue and wondered if you had any tips that would help?

I shall watch this with interest as I have two dogs which will poo upstairs if a gate is left open.

If it's in exactly the same spot every time, deny access for a wh ile or cover the area when he does have access to it unsupervised (perhaps put his bed there).

Once the habit is broken and provided you give him ample opportunity and praise for 'going' in the right place things should work out fine.

Don't though become complacent too quickly. Keep up the routine for a fair while after you think you've 'cracked it' to make sure that the new toileting behaviour is well and truly set in before becoming too trusting.

Have you got any of the bitter spray? Toby didn't even like the smell of ours, not sure he even tried tasting it!

Although it would be inconvenient for a while can you cover the area over with a box or anything, just to break the habit?

I would block the place with a table or box.
If that didn`t work I`d go back to basics with house training.
I think it`s just habit now - he doesn`t know it`s `wrong`. It`s become the place where he poos.

Rupert went through a phase of pooping in the spare bedroom in Ireland. It started when he had an upset tummy and from there became habit. Denying him unsupervised access to the room and going back to basics on house training broke the habit quite quickly.

Poppy will poo/pee by the back door, so has to be taken out every two hours (as a pup!)

We have baby gates to allow the cats access but it keeps the dogs in the area's they are allowed in we have 2 adult dogs and a 10 month old puppy and this works for all of them

I think I will be adding an extra babygate to the top of the stairs as a second line of defence to him going upstairs and try to break the habit.

The area is next to our laundry basket so wondered if that might be a trigger?

It's impossible to tell without a bit of trial and error so the only way to find out would be to move the laundry basket to a totally different area. If the marking stops or moves to the area where the laundry basket has been moved to, then yes If not - no