Continuing from where we last stop… (you can read the previous post here)
Is two weeks enough for a dog to get comfortable with a plastic tray that it will pee on it of its own accord? I decided to test it out overnight Friday some weeks back since the part time domestic help will be here Saturday. If there’s accidents, she’ll be there to help at least.
Saturday came and went. Dog did not eliminate Saturday morning at home. She usually does because that is the one day a week I get to sleep in! (Much needed!!)
That should have been the CLUE, blinking red hot at me that the dog would rather wait to go out!
Did we heed it? Never even considered that!
Saturday night, I wondered if I should remove the tray and continue the test next week. Unwisely I left it. What’s the worse the dog would do? Pee on the floor? That’s easy to clean up.
She peed on her new bed -_________________________- << see my long face.
Yes, yes I know there are worse things a dog can do, but still… :S Don’t you just hate unnecessary chores that you could have avoided by being smarter :(
So there my friend is a lesson learnt. Don’t just think of the worse thing the dog could do, but the ultimate WORST she could do. Because, my human friends, I am not the dog and I cannot predict its thoughts!
So then I learnt to leave the tray there with fresh newspaper and peepad, but also another set of newspaper and peepad on the floor. I starting giving her her mealtime kibble in the toilet to get her comfortable with both the tray and the shower cubicle.
It continued to storm, and so there was an episode in the kitchen because we did not shut the baby gate tightly enough.
Kibble in the toilet continued. And she did get more comfortable. So comfortable that she decided she needed to chew her pressed bone on it, since she is missing the bed she peed on.
It stormed, did she do it on the tray? Nope, she did it on the newspaper on the floor next to the tray. I shifted the newspaper on the tray to the floor to replace the soiled ones, and put fresh newspaper and pee pad on the tray.
It stormed this morning while we were out. Lots of loud thunder.
We came home to find the tray half out of the toilet, newspapers scratched and falling out over the corridor, including some stinky poo.
She did it on the tray :)… Now how do I stop her from scratching the newspaper after she does it??????? :D Bright ideas welcome!
Roxy the Traveling Dog
It sounds like a battle of wills at your place.
weliveinaflat
I’m more stubborn than her so we will get there!! :D
yashikibuta
hahahaha! that’s so funny. Well not when you’re the one to clean up the mess. But at least she is learning and her mistake was peeing on her bed, not on the human’s bed :P which we learned the hard way when Angel was a baby. when you teach a dog to go up the human’s bed, teach them to go down!
Angel also knows how to pee on a pee pad, problem is, she hates stepping on her pee, so to her, as long as she is within the vicinity of the pee pad when she pees, she’s good… I guess she got us trained and not the other way around.
weliveinaflat
We got her the peepad so that she won’t step on her own pee or get her bottom wet as she does it because the pee tends to puddle on the newspaper :D Did you ever try those ugodog things that let the pee drip through so the dog doesn’t get its feet wet at all? But since she is smart to have trained you, you guys are happy either way ;) And you have a garden just a few steps away too! So convenient. :P
yashikibuta
For sure. But Angel, being the brat that she is, would pee outside and poop on her pad :)
weliveinaflat
I like that phrase “Angel, being a brat”… isn’t it strange how people/dogs never turn out according to what their name describe them as?? :P
yashikibuta
LOL! I know. Angel is out little queen brat while Chaos is the actual angel. they are our oxymorons :p
weliveinaflat
Ice and Frost must be hotdogs then :P
lensandpensbysally
I’ve never heard of training a dog to go inside: cats are so easy, but dogs.
weliveinaflat
It’s actually not that hard to paper train dogs from puppyhood I believe, although it must take persistence and patience. Are cats easy? I don’t know since we never had one :P Donna is paper-trained and does just fine without the tray, which she is scared off. But I wanted to include the tray just for long term hygiene purposes, otherwise we never use that toilet at all :P So for other dogs that do not have a fear of plastic trays, they could be totally fine with it, I don’t know :P. But it’s necessary for us to train the dog to go indoors when it is an apartment dog with busy humans. And of course it is useful for emergencies and when it rains and thunders and she needs to pee due to the fearful excitement she experiences. Thanks for dropping by Sally :)
lensandpensbysally
Cats are so easy Set litter box up and they know what to do.
weliveinaflat
That sounds like pet-parent heaven… :) TGIF Have a great weekend Sally, you and your family :)
rubytheblacklabrador
Golly – I feel for you. When Ruby was little we lived in a house with a small yard covered with wooden slats. We bought a largish piece of artificial turf and laid it out in one corner. After each meal we would take Ruby over to the turf and say ‘toilet, toilet’ (you can obviously use whatever word you like, even something like say bananas!) If she went then we would praise her, give her treats etc etc. Then throughout the day periodically take her over to the turf. Over time she would go there on her own and when she did – lots of praise, treats etc and using the ‘toilet’ as the signal. Then we started to cut down/fold the turf so the area she had was smaller and smaller. In the end it was about the size of your pee mat. So fast forward to today – if we’re out and say ‘toilet’ to Ruby is means ‘hurry up and go now’ which she pretty much does; when she does go in the street we also say ‘good toilet’ (no treats though). I guess the turf thing took a couple of weeks to master but we’ve kept saying ‘toilet’ now for ever. Sorry for the long post but I think you just have to keep going with it, maybe make the area larger to start off with and use ‘toilet’ or something you feel happy with saying out aloud in the street every time she goes. She’s smart – she will get it! :)
weliveinaflat
Don’t apologise for the long post. I truly appreciate when you guys take the effort to write and interact! :D It makes me feel less like a thin voice lost in the wind, hahahahahaha!
We just do “pee-pee” and “poop” :P Although along the way, Mr P thought it would be funny to scream “Bombs away!!” when she does it :P except that we were already using “poop”. Hah! But no, she does not do it on command unlike Ruby *envious* We pretty much missed her puppyhood which is the best time to train that I believe. :P
But yup, agree that we just need to keep working with her. She is actually newspaper-trained and went pretty consistently on it, but we included the tray which was a new thing and she was scared of it, which is why we were working on counter-conditioning that fear out of her so she goes back to the newspaper. But she seems to be ok with it now (fingers-crossed), so it’s really just how do I encourage her not to scratch when she’s done which makes the mess a bigger mess! :P Would be so much easier to train if she goes on command. But if she ever does it at home, its usually when we are in bed or out of the house or we are busy… she does it very, very privately. :P