How to housetrain a puppy. Not.
A clever person once said that the best way to housetrain a puppy was to get yourself a nice, firm, rolled-up newspaper. Then every time the puppy messes in the house, you smack yourself very hard on the head with the newspaper whilst repeating ‘I must watch my puppy, I must watch my puppy’.
So listen, we’ve taken on a very new puppy, one that probably shouldn’t even have left her Mum yet. Ergo, we’ve resigned ourselves to living in a sea of piddle for a good few weeks yet (‘Jeez’, says Hubby, ‘I might have to invest in some scuba gear’). We realised pretty quickly that there was no point in scooping her up every time she attempted to pee and rushing her outside. The reasons being:
- It’s raining
- By the time she’s ‘assumed the position’ she’s already started and therefore you’re just allowing her to leave a big trail of wee between wherever she decides to go and the back door.
- She’s already peed by the time you lift her up, and even though she always manages to do another one outside, she’ll still always have another ‘in the barrel’ ready to go again when you get back in.
So we decided to adopt an ‘on the hour every hour’ routine, where if she pees in the house it’s just cleaned up (ignore the bad, praise the good), and then she’s taken out regularly (as well as after meals, and before bed etc) just to get her used to doing her business in the right place, where she gets tons of praise and cuddles for doing the do. Eventually she’ll get the picture.
This morning, then, saw me trying to clean up two puddles of pee, plus a long line of piddly footprints leading away from said wee, whilst supervising #2 making pancakes for breakfast, washing Bert’s bed (yep, she peed on that too), and trying not to step on her. Then, bringing his plate back from the table, #2 fell over a strategically placed laundry basket (oops, my bad) and fell sprawling to the floor, whacking his arm on a box of Stella (also left strategically on the floor, this time by Hubby) and smashing his plate. Bert fled trembling into the utility room, everybody else suddenly found somewhere else they really had to be, and I was left trying to pick up shards of china, whilst simultaneously pushing the puppy away with one leg, clearing up the mess left from #2′s culinary efforts and mopping up her earlier emissions. While all this was going on, she sauntered to the middle of the kitchen and calmly left a fresh puddle for me to clear up.
Right, said I, enough. Well, actually what I said was ‘OY! WHERE THE F*CK ARE YOU LOT?! I’M NOT THE ONLY PERSON IN THIS HOUSE RESPONSIBLE FOR CLEARING F*CKING TABLES, WIPING COOKERS, CLEARING UP DOG PEE AND SUPERVISING THIS BLOODY PUPPY Y’KNOW!!!!’, (what a lady) but you get the gist.
A family conference ensued, where we decided that, for the time being, we need to allocate a ‘toilet corner’ which we can cover in newspaper and encourage her to use. At the moment, as soon as she wees, it’s instantly cleared up and she’s not getting the message that there’s a particular thing she should be doing, it’s just a ‘pee and go’ kind of thing. So ‘toilet corner’ has been created in the corner just between the kitchen and the lounge, and we’ll be putting her on there on a regular basis, then when she gets used to it, we can start to move it closer to the door. In the meantime, I think I need a lie down.
