Happy Pets

House-training should prove no problem if you’re quick and alert to your puppy’s needs. He will need to pay frequent visits to his spot in the garden: after each meal, after a sleep and any time you think about it in between. Always pick him up and carry him to the spot. Give him a command. I use the words ‘busy dog‘. Don’t dump him and retreat back to the house and close the door. He hasn’t a clue what he’s been put in the garden for. You must stay with him, repeating your commands over and over again. Whether it’s hailing, blowing a gale or a snowstorm’s on, you must persevere. As soon as he’s been a ‘busy dog‘, give him lots of praise, tell him how clever he is, pick him up and return him to the house. If you are diligent and watch your puppy closely, you will know when he needs to go out. A sure sign will be when he puts his nose to the ground, his tail up in the air and runs round in circles. That is your cue to move speedily with him into the garden.

There is bound to be the odd mistake, but it will be your fault. I can guarantee that your puppy will choose the most inconvenient moment to be a ‘busy dog‘—when the phone rings, or someone’s knocking at the front door. On occasions like these, I don’t leave my puppy in the kitchen to get on with it. I pick him up and carry him with me to the door or the phone to ensure that no little accidents happen. When you catch your puppy in the act, tell him ‘No’, pick him up immediately and rush him to his spot in the garden. If you find a puddle behind the kitchen door, there is no point in reprimanding him, he’s forgotten about it. The worst possible thing you can do is to take him and rub his nose in it and then throw him outside. This will give your puppy a complex about relieving himself anywhere and he will try and hide from you. You may then find he’s going to relieve himself under beds and behind settees, because he’s afraid of you. It’s advisable to line the floor with newspapers at night when puppy is to be left alone. You can’t expect a six-week-old puppy to go through the night without relieving himself. You wouldn’t expect a six-week-old baby to—although one of the blessings of having a puppy is that he’s house-trained much quicker than a baby. Puppies are very much like babies—you can’t take your eyes off them for a minute without their getting up to some mischief or other, and it is far easier if the whole family are prepared to accept their share of puppy- minding. It’s so easy to sit down in the evening after a hard day, and become engrossed in the television, forgetting all about puppy.

Don and I did this one evening when Katy was a few weeks old, although, before settling down to watch the film, I had taken her into the garden so that she could be a ‘busy dog‘. The other four dogs were curled up in their respective places, and I fully intended to keep an eye on Katy, but the film was far too thrilling. I remember at one point looking round and seeing her tail and back legs sticking out from under the coffee table. Good, I thought, she’s fast asleep. I turned my attention back to the screen. Part of my mind must have heard the gentle lapping, and I did notice, once or twice, that Don picked his tankard of beer, looked into it, hummed to himself and went to the pantry where he keeps his supplies. Just after ‘The End’ appeared on the television screen there was a soft thud. Katy had been asleep on the settee for a time, and the thud was her falling off on to the carpet. She sat up with a puzzled expression on her face and hiccoughed. Don looked across at her, and commented that she was rather bleary-eyed. On closer inspection it was apparent that she was drunk.

`Thank goodness for that,’ Don said with a sigh. ‘I thought I was going mad. I was sure Ifilled my tankard up and every time I looked it was empty.’

Katy had been quietly sipping Don’s beer. We both laughed until tears ran down our faces to see Katy staggering around the garden that night. But I certainly don’t advocate that your puppy has a nightly ‘tipple’, so watch him carefully.

At around twelve weeks, you can expect your puppy to go through the night. Try him without the newspapers. If there are accidents on the kitchen floor, put the newspapers down again for another few nights. Don’t come down in the morning and reprimand your puppy for making a mistake in the night. He does not remember. He thinks you’re telling him off for welcoming you as you come through the door. That is not a very good basis for your future relationship.

If your puppy refuses to be clean in the daytime, ask yourself why. Is there something wrong with him? If you suspect this, you must take him to the vet immediately. But, more likely, there is something wrong with your training. If you have bought an older dog who needs house-training, then you have a bigger problem on your hands, in more ways than one. A dog will not usually foul his own bedding area so, if you can, restrict the dog at night when you have to leave him and you should find he gradually becomes clean. In the daytime you should have no problem. By making frequent trips to the garden you will never give him the opportunity to foul the house.

One of the puppies I sold came back to me because it could not be house-trained. I always try to ensure that anyone wanting one of my puppies is offering the right type of home, but in this instance I made a mistake. Fortunately, my puppies only leave here on the understanding that if anything goes wrong they come back and within half an hour of this puppy’s return I realised that there was something very wrong with him. Although he was trotting into the garden and being a ‘busy dog‘ on command, he was still dribbling when he returned to the house. I took him to the vet immediately and discovered that he had very bad cystitis, and that this had obviously been going on over the last month or so. Once the family who had originally bought the puppy from me realised this, they wanted him back. Needless to say, I flatly refused, and gave them their money back. If they couldn’t spot a case of cystitis that was so obvious in such a young puppy, they weren’t responsible owners in my opinion.

Often a puppy, or even an older dog, will be unclean at night because he is afraid of being alone. In all such cases. that I have come into contact with, the puppy has been clean as soon as the owner has let him sleep in their bedroom. I don’t advocate that you should have your puppy in your bedroom with you—puppies can be a nuisance at three o’clock in the morning—but it’s worth keeping this in mind in case you are unlucky enough to own a dog who gets lonely in the dark. Too much feeding at the wrong time can often cause your dog to foul the kitchen during the night. It is worth experimenting with different types of food, or different times of feeding your dog. It will be obvious if you are feeding too much—he will soon be very fat.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 at 2:21 am and is filed under Dogs, Puppies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.