May 06 2009
Are you sure you want a puppy?
The two puppies rescued from under the rubbish pile are still here. I’m beginning to understand why, despite the cute pictures and the nice descriptions, nobody seems to want a puppy right now.
The real mystery, in fact, is how the dog has hung on as a human companion for thousands of years.
This morning, I looked up from the breakfast table to see that Bruce, who had been out minutes before, was peacefully beginning to poop on the carpet. I shot to my feet. “No!” I bellowed. “Outside!!!”
He gave me that peaceful serene look that puppies have at moments like those and didn’t move. I trotted to him, meaning to scoop him up and deposit him outdoors — gingerly, you understand.
Wanda, dear little sister Wanda, charged with me. However, she began on the right and ended on the left, managing to trip me twice in a single straight-line diagonal. She doesn’t really understand about accidental stepping-on, assumed I was trying to kill her (I was assuming something similar about her) and screeched. I did too. Bruce reached a logical conclusion: we were both out for his blood. He bolted.
However, he has been eating fur off the floor, which was hindering him in his original project. At this point, I had a puppy running terrified through the house with poop in progress and stuck. Unhappy with the situation, he too began to screech, which fascinated his sister, who began to chase him. Meanwhile, I went to the door caroling “Outside!” and eventually “Get out the ******* door!” This had all the effect one might expect — the adults shot outside while the puppies vanished in another lap around the laundry room circle.
I did eventually capture and release Bruce. We did sort out his fibrous issues. I did clean the early-stage poop off the floor. Minutes later, he and his sister were both busily engaged in reminding me why we keep these creatures. They really are cute, sweet little bugbears.
You gave me a good chuckle, this morning. I needed it.
I’m glad that your article was featured in today. I have adult two dogs, a Golden Retriever and a Border Collie. I love them to pieces but their training is sadly lacking. I spend most of my time with the horses.
Great story haha!
I have 3 Labrador retrievers at home and they, in their own unique ways, present plenty of problems LOL!
I have to say I’m caught up in puppy world right now. My blog entry today was about five puppies I found under my carport yesterday! FIVE! I just got my dog out of the puppy stage and now here I go again but with so many more to make so much more mess!
Whatever you do just praise them alot when they poo and pee outside but ignore them (emotionally, I mean, you still have to clean up their poo) when they deficate in the house. It takes several weeks but they eventually get the idea “my person likes me more when I poo and pee outside!”. My dog was abused as a pup and she took almost 4 months to housetrain because she was so traumatized. She was 7 months then and is 6 years now. As a shelter dog it took my attentiveness, good training and kindness to make her the smart, little investigator she is now but if you invest in some one on one training with your pups they will be very obedient as they get older.
racers7: Oh, yes, TONS of praise for outside. For the past five weeks. However, without a squawk inside they’re not learning that all places are not created equal. They don’t like making me unhappy. Expressing my misery doesn’t seem to equate to punishment, but it does seem to help convey to them that I have a preference.
There’s this neat experiment you can re-perform on an obedience class’s human students: use a clicker for yes and a bicycle horn for no, but don’t tell the students what their assignment is. Just give them a heap of random objects. Click when they’re close, or honk when they’re wrong, or both. It turns out that the honked-only students will give up, and the click students have a better time but take a long time to figure out the task, and those who get both actually figure out what they’re doing in quite a lot less time. We invented corrections for a reason. The trick is just balancing them out and not escalating into pointless punishment.
ncmom: Five is a lot. Two was plenty! And mine were eight weeks old when we caught them, which is an easy age for indoctrinating and for solid food.
I know that my puppy is like my child. When he is sick he even lays on my legs or belly when I am trying to sleep at night and whimpers until I wake up to cuddle him. Sometimes he too makes me so frustrated, he is amazing at everything except he really thinks that it is so fun to run away from me and play with other people and puppies. Then we get back into the apartment and he gives me his puppy dog face, and I know I can’t live without him. He makes me laugh quite a bit. He improves my life!
lol I cant say i miss the puppy days
You aren’t kidding. No more puppies, no more dogs that aren’t trained. I have a hard enough time with the kids getting trained let alone trying to get a dog to obey….hmmm come to think of it most times the pets are more accomodating.
Lucky for me we have friends who travel and we dog sit. That is my dog fix.