whining / bell training

[Little Levi]

Our Boxer Levi has just turned 14 months and he whines and whines and whines. I now understand that we taught him to do this - originally we would praise him and give him attention when he whined as a puppy bcs we were housebreaking him and he was asking to go out. The clever little man quickly learned though that all he had to do was whine and we would jump up and go out with him. Now he wines to go out to go the bathroom or to play or just sit in the yard and sunbathe. How do we tell the difference btw. demanding to go out for 'fun' and needing to go out to use the bathroom? I understand we need to ignore the whining to go away but am not sure how to tell the difference.
Should we retrain him to ring a bell to go out to use the bathroom and continue to ignore the gratuitous whining?

 

[lexintitus]

I've been in that situation with Titus. He also quickly learned to whine whenever he wanted to go out...no matter what the reason. Finally, we trained him to repond to our question "Do you want to go out?" When we ask that, and he really has to go, he'll immediately head over to the door to be let out and does his business. I ask him the question 30min. after he eats, every hour and a half and right after he wakes up. Those are the typical times when a dog has to use the bathroom. In the beginning, I took him out, after I asked the question, every single time so he was able to associate the question with going outside. Now, whenever I ask the question, and he doesn't have to go, he'll just stand where he is and then goes back to playing. It's worked out really well. Hope that helps some.

We didn't have much success with bell training but I had questions about that too, and when I did a search on this site, I found plenty of info. Just type in "bell training" in the search forum.