No one can deny that the first time your puppy sits at your feet when told and looks up at you with those brown eyes, your heart melts. There is a cuteness that prompts an 'Ahh' to leave your lips and you just want to hug them. The same is true when they come running to you when you call their name (enjoy it while you can, the naughty 'you can't catch me' phase comes in at about 4 months). Ahead of you is a large array of commands to try to master, and depending on the breed and your determination and consistency, will happen with varying degrees of success.
One thing you are not warned enough about as a puppy owner is the one thing you want most of all to achieve - toilet training. Puppies don't understand that going to the toilet on the kitchen floor, or nice rug, isn't something you want. The only way to teach them this is by catching them before or in the act, giving a negative sound and moving them very quickly to outside, then praising them repeatedly for going there instead of on your carpet. Teaching a command when you take them for a walk can help too. Any time you see they are going to relieve themselves, repeat a phrase of your choice, this will help them associate the command with the action and means you can encourage them to go outside when you need them to. We use 'better go' and added 'two-sies' for Flynn to learn the difference. I have to admit he wasn't the quickest puppy to house train. He'd spent a lot of time outside with his breeders so, to him, there was no difference between the patio yard at their house and the tile kitchen floor in ours. Like most dogs though, he didn't like to 'go' in his crate so if he started crying we knew it was probably time to take him outside and encourage him to do his business in the garden.
Puppy pads, in Flynn's opinion, were for shredding up and dragging round the place, so they didn't work for us as an option, but it's worth having a pack for mopping up accidents if nothing else. This, of course also means there are likely to be a lot of interrupted nights as he asks to go out, but it's better for his training to take him rather than expect to clean it up in the morning. We had done fairly well with our night time walks outside, but I was treated to a particularly bad night due to eating a sausage before bed...
Flynn was about three months old at this point and ate anything and everything. As a treat we had chips for dinner and bought the dogs a sausage each. This has always been very popular with them and a nice treat, however we learned that night that perhaps Flynn needed to be a little older and his stomach a little stronger before fried food was introduced. I took him up to bed as usual at about 10.30pm. He happily went into his fabric crate den and settled down on the vet-bed, crashed out and snoring as usual. An hour later I was awoken by the sound of whimpering. This was nothing new. He often got me up several times a night at that age. I put on his lead and took him outside, he did a wee and we came back in.
Two hours later he woke me again. This time he had run out of water, so I topped it up for him and, just for safety purposes, took him outside again. He did another wee and dragged me back up to bed. At 2.40am we took another outdoor excursion. Three outings in one night by this hour was unusual, so I wondered if he needed anything else. For ten minutes we walked around outside - when I say walked, sometimes he was dragging his heals and refusing to move because he wanted to go back inside and whining at me that he was tired. After the ten minutes were up, I conceded he was done and we returned to the bedroom.
Fifteen minutes later he was rattling around in his pen and whimpered again. I got up, slightly annoyed that, given the fact he's a retriever, it was probably he'd decided he wanted breakfast... how wrong I was. I opened the top panel of his den to find, what can only be described as, a Poo-nami. It was everywhere. In his water bowl, over his toys, his bed and my lovely golden retriever puppy was now a mixture of gold and dark brown streaks... I would rival it with a horror film. The older spaniel in his pen gave me a look of pity before settling back down to nap.
Now what do I do? The following is my suggestion based on my actions that night:
Step 1: Remove as many items from the bed as possible and take them to the bathroom, rinsing them under the tap and leaving them in the bath tub to sort at a more sociable hour.
Step 2: Remove puppy and accept that your pyjamas and dressing gown are going to be covered in dog poo as you carry him downstairs to wash him in the big sink. It's an experience bathing a puppy at 3am, especially when you've only managed a couple of hours sleep so far that night. Go outside again and walk around until he squats again or you are sure there is nothing more he needs to do.
Step 3: Return to bedroom with clean puppy wrapped in a towel and spare bed tucked under your arm. (if you don't have a spare bed for your puppy, GET ONE!... in fact get several,...) Put the puppy on the floor to play while you clean out the bed with wipes, toilet roll, puppy pads and anything else you have to use to somehow make the pen inhabitable and clean again. Put the clean bed inside and the dirty one in a bin bag to wash, or burn, depending on your preference.
Step 4: Convince Flynn it's time to go back to bed and not breakfast time.
Step 5: Decide if you are too tired to change your own pyjamas which by this time are wet as well as possibly still poo stained and crash into bed. Lie there desperate to sleep and envious that said puppy is already snoring away like a jack hammer so loudly that you don't know if you will be able to block out the sound.
Luckily for me, the poo-nami night was a one off and he has eaten chip shop sausage since without a repeat experience. However, I have banned tripe or gammon before bed due to salt levels and therefore Flynn drinking so much before bed he has me up on the hour, every hour. Some foods should definitely be saved for breakfast treats.
House training can be something that goes backwards at times, but remember, the puppy doesn't know he's done something wrong so shouting at them doesn't help. Just a short reprimand and quickly move to outside and you will finally get there. Flynn still has moments if he's left unsupervised in the kitchen, especially when it's raining outside so he pretends to pee to get inside quicker, but he is learning to ask to go out and eventually learned to get through the night without needing to go out. It takes patience, but it can be done, just be prepared for the down and dirty as well as the cute when you have a puppy.
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