[Dailydrool] sitting-down to potty? older Basset aggression to puppy?

[Jennifer Myka]

Hello Everyone!  

My husband and I adopted our second Basset, Chloe, recently.  She is 3 and a half months old and came from a rescue situation where they apparently separated the puppies from their mother at 5 weeks.  The entire family was rescued, and all of the puppies were fostered out.  Our little Chloe recently was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection, which explained why potty-training seemed to be getting better and suddenly was terrible.  She is doing much better, but both my husband and I have seen her potty while sitting down.  She ends up in a puddle, but doesn't seem to mind at all.  Has anyone heard of this?  Any suggestions on how to stop this behaviour?  We are wondering if perhaps because she was in a very non-hygienic environment before they rescued all of the Bassets (the foster-parents said the puppies all smelled like a barn or something), if maybe they were not able to go away from their bed to potty and she never learned that this is an issue? 
 Or is this another weird Basset quirk?

The second issue is that we are still having some weird aggression from our 10-year-old Basset, Betsy.  We have had Betsy since she was 5-and-a-half weeks old because the breeder (who I now know was a backyard breeder and not on the reputable list) sent her home then.  We've always thought she missed out a lot because they didn't let her and her siblings stay to socialize.  Anyhow, there was an issue on Day 1 but we had gotten pizza and realized too late that Betsy was fighting for food, not realizing the puppy was not competition.  The second issue, which ended up with a canine puncture through Chloe's lip, seemed to be because I was trying to clicker train both girls and had treats.  This had been working well earlier, but a lot of people showed up at the barn all at once (we also have horses) and we think that Betsy ended up feeling overwhelmed - she gets very protective sometimes.  She also had seemed to be tired, so we figured we just didn't read
 her signals correctly.

The reason why I am writing now is that my husband witnessed the third incident which resulted in two more punctures on Chloe's ear now.  The weird part of the situation was that the two girls had found a mouse in the arena and Betsy had been chasing it and playing with Chloe for at least 10 minutes while my husband watched.  Then all of the sudden, without any warning he could see or hear, Betsy turned and attacked Chloe.  We are worried because we don't see any warning signals sometimes with Betsy (we NEVER leave them home alone together just in case), and when she does snap, she is very aggressive where she grabs on and shakes.  It almost is like she forgets that she is correcting a puppy and instead reverts to trying to kill some prey.  Each time there has been an incident, she has done this shaking thing.  Any suggestions would be very helpful, as most of the time they seem to be ok together.  Betsy is often a "stick-in-the-mud" but we've also tried
 to help when she is tired by telling Chloe to leave-it.  However, just the night before, Betsy and Chloe were playing together very carefully, wrestling and only play-biting.  They also seem to love to go on walks together, and Betsy has been showing Chloe how to walk in the creek, etc.  We've really tried to not have Betsy think the new one is taking over her position as alpha, including feeding Betsy first and making Chloe wait for her dinner.  We are not sure what else to do, and don't want Chloe to end up messed up because of these issues...

Thanks for listening, and I really hope somebody has heard of similar potty-training and adult-puppy issues with Bassets so we can have something to go by!  (Help!!)

Take care,
Jennifer & Thomas, 10-year food slaves to Betsy, and now Chloe