toilet training Archives - We live in a flat

Tag: toilet training

Loo, loo, skip to the loo~

On August 18, 2013

Ears back, climbing, seeking attention, yawning.

Yes, I know. Thank you for telling me.

I know she is nervous, but sometimes I wonder if I coddle her too much. Mr P ignores her and she seems calmer with him. But when she sees me, she gets really pushy like above. And if you study her eyes, no dilation. She’s nervous, under some stress but still managing.

She wants something with that automatic sit.

Soon she figures we’re both taking it easy, even with the approaching rain and seems calmer. I talked to her a little and she gets excited. Oh-oh, I probably should never talk to her again. Ever!

The thunderstorm got really loud. And then she starts to circle her sleeping towel in the study determinedly. (- – !!!) I reactively screamed, “NO!” And she did. Thank GOD!

Urgently got her into the toilet. There she goes. For the record, because Mr P did once let her do it on the carpet because he thought she was circling to go to sleep. This is what it looks like.

She circled deliberately on the spot more than 10 times.

I probably should have taken a video but it seemed voyeuristic to me. Don’t ask me why I think an animated gif is any better. – –

She is toilet_trained, but when she gets over-excited, common sense/trained behaviour always flies out the window and any mat/rug-like texture becomes fair game for elimaination. That is why when we leave her alone in the house, she has no access to any towels, rugs, mats, only the pee pad in the toilet. And when we are at home and these things lie around, we need to really keep an eye on her to shepherd her to the right spot to do it during stormy weather conditions.

Since she seemed to calm down better when I am out of the room, I went to sleep the rest of the day away. I wasn’t feeling well anyway.

Later in the night as we sat in the living room, she went and slept in her crate. Good.

We had a power failure today. Did a little bit of crate training today with her, while the electrician presented himself as the distraction working on the power unit. I was able to close the crate door with her inside for minutes, yay!

P/S It was difficult to get any electrician on a the phone on a weekend it seems. We waited more than 2 hours before the original electrician we called came along after his praying session at his temple. During that time, we tried Town Council-listed numbers, companies that advertised themselves as 24hr emergency services, etc and they all never picked up the phone! D: Good idea to keep a reliable emergency contact for such services handy.

It’s not me, it’s the bed!

By weliveinaflat

On July 5, 2013

In Behaviour

When there’s two of you, you can blame each other. When there’s one of you, blame anything.

The dog that didn’t know how to sleep on her bed properly has recently shown that adult dogs can learn new tricks. ;)

She now spends her time equally between her baby cot mattress and her cushion bed and has been properly resting her head off the floor. Well, except for the times she decided she should sprawl entirely on the floor, but I digress. As I was saying, the dog has become very comfortable with her new bed, so very comfortable in fact that she thought the bed needed a bedroom…

… apparently our bedroom will do just fine. The bed is not choosy.

Unfortunately for the bed and its canine bed partner, I am.

She’s trying to look like one of the furniture while I pull the bed back out into the corridor again.

On a separate note, we have made great progress with her fear of the big black plastic tray right there beside her.

We were originally advised that she was newspaper-trained, but newspapers were not the cleanest way for elimination at home. At the time, it made sense to us to get a tray on which to lay the newspapers so that it could collect any seepage. We could also easily push the tray under the sink so that the common toilet could still be used by house guests without the yucky feeling of dog pee on the toilet floor. Unfortunately, Donna decided she had a fear of the tray. I guessed the plastic tray slipped when she used it for the first time.

She is no longer afraid of it now and readily steps into it and does her tricks on it. It took a lot of encouragement, praise and treating to get her to even walk near the tray at first. This video helped me a lot in learning how to approach counter-conditioning her reaction to the plastic tray.

And we did have to go step by step from encouraging her to come near the try to trying to place one paw, two, three, etc on the scary tray. She struggled as I encouraged her to place one paw on the plastic tray. Her paw hovered up and down as she struggled with whatever conflicting doggy emotions she had. So in the end, I tried encouraging her to place her paw on my hand which I rested on the border of the tray. It took a lot of courage from her and a lot of clapping and praising on my end to get her there.

But once she willed herself to physically go on the tray by herself (I was already on it). She realised and was assured the tray was stable and that it was not going to slip with her on it. Slip-resistant mats and non-skid foam pads under the tray helped stabilise it well to build that assurance. Positive praise and encouragement did the rest of the job in securing her confidence.

So for now, the tray is staying in the corridor so that she gets very used to it, before we move it to the toilet and test if she is comfortable to eliminate on the newspapers and pee pad laid on it.

The newspapers and pee pad set up is still not ideal. Sometimes she gets her bottom and paws all wet which means she continues to drip and smear pee on the floor outside the toilet, sometimes all the way to the living room. But one step at a time, we thought we’ll solve our current problem first before introducing other home-elimination tools, such as raised pee trays that supposedly help eliminate the problem of wet paws from pee, etc.

Do you live in a flat/apartment? Do you have a set up that works for you and your medium or large dog at home? We would love to hear your recommendations!

Note: We usually take her downstairs to do it on the grass, but toilet training for the home is still necessary for emergencies e.g. throwing up or cases where we are not able to take her down for her regular loo breaks.

As for how the bed actually got there. The dog was having the time of her life getting high on her own antics, which involved hopping around the bed, wrestling with her towel and in general trying to dig a hole in the bed. I imagine the digging pushed the bed into the room.

Toilet training and voice-sensitive dogs

By weliveinaflat

On April 22, 2013

In Behaviour

When we were first introduced to Donna, we were told that she was toilet trained. Really? She certainly had a good time on the kitchen rug rather than the newspapers in the toilet. We slowly worked on getting her on the newspapers and for a while, we thought she got it until she went back to the kitchen rug again. It was a minor episode, a small blip in middle of the regular blops when she did use the newspaper. But perhaps because she largely did it outside, the newspaper training was maybe not as reinforced as we would like it to be. Result? There is always a potential of an accident somewhere else in the house.

So rather than solely rely on our, erm, not so perfect training the humans decided they needed to train themselves to (1) stop having rugs and (2) get use to the inconvenience of the child gate blocking entry to the kitchen. Ah yes, a sad day for human autonomy. The dog trained us instead :P

Picture above: One of Donna’s favourite things to do at home is to flop in front of the child-gate in hopes of a treat or two from the kitchen.

When is Donna likely to do it inside? Well, there was a bit of the time when she was still adjusting to living inside a house where people come and make noise outside the door and ring the doorbell. She would rush to the door and then rush to the toilet to pee on the newspapers in excitement. Thankfully, people coming to the door is a phenomenon that is growing passe by the second. She doesn’t get so excited that she needed to pee anymore.

But close to dawn this morning there was a pretty big thunder storm and I predicted to Mr P that he would find pee and poop when he went out to check on her. Surprisingly, the newspapers were clean. She didn’t do it?

Pictured above left: Donna’s private toilet, including her personal shower cubicle complete with bath stuff.
Pictured above right: The scene of the crime!! Now cleaned up.

She did, but by the front door of the house. On the floor where her water bowl usually sits on a rug, was now a few tiny islands of shit on a lake of yellow pee. :( Somehow she had managed to push the water bowl and the cheap rug to the side but the rug that had survived all the other rugs we got rid of, finally succumbed to the deluge. My best guess is that by instinct the dog went to pee and poop there because of the presence of the rug when it got too excited, perhaps because it was closer in proximity to her bed than the newspapers in the toilet. I also wonder if perhaps the thunderstorm made the toilet drafty and the newspapers flap around so that she was hesitant to go on the newspapers. I have no real way of verifying though.

Picture: Donna fidgeting joyfully in front of the rug before it met its accidental demise.

I think I’ve grumbled on this blog more than once that clean up is a pain. It is also something that I’ve a lot of practice and try to do it robotic-ally now. Dump the crap in a plastic bag, soak the pee with kitchen towel, wipe dry and spray the area liberally with a solution of white vinegar. Wait. Wipe dry. I look at the yellow stains in the grout and hope that there is not too much work ahead still.

But hey, instead of reinforcing that negative attitude, it occurred to me that it was lucky we kept all the room doors closed. It would have been worse had Donna taken it into her head to go into one of the rooms and eliminated on the useless omg-you-can’t-get-it-wet-or-it-will-pop laminate wood flooring that the flat came with.

As for Donna, she was the usual carefree, omg-I-am-so-happy-to-see-you dog until we discovered her treasure by the front door. Then she went into her guilty and deferential pose. Not that we would do anything to her. I had read before that dogs can’t connect punishment to their misdeed if it was after the fact. But there was a point in time where we were both very sick and the dog kept peeing where she should not and one just couldn’t help feeling very helpless and upset that I blew a fuse and screamed at her. She went into the down position, tummy flat on the floor, looking away from me and went very still for a really long time. And no, the undesired peeing behaviour did not go away. So what I ended up with was one very scared dog who continued doing things that made me mad after the scolding. It had the potential to downward spiral into a negative cycle which wasn’t going to do anyone any good.

So after that experience which showed that Donna was voice-sensitive, I never screamed at her again. I do ignore her, more to keep my own emotions in check so that we can maintain a relative calm in the house. Not all dogs react the same to raised voices, it was interesting for me to learn that from the crazydoglady that Willy talks back when they raise their voice at him.

Have you ever raise your voice at your dog? And how did it respond?