 Housetrained at last
I just wanted to post a positive result in the housetraining department to let those struggling with this know it can be done! I posted a while back that I was having real difficulty with this along with so many other people. My little girl is now 11 months old (I adopted her as a rescue at 6 months old and I'm sure she had 6 months of peeing and pooping in the home and that is why she was dumped at a shelter) and she is 90% there. I say 90% because I know she is not ready for an 8 hour day free reign in the house. But she has had no accidents now for a month or more. My plan is to write my training protocol to achieve this - but in short I had to be consistent, take her out on a schedule, watch her EVERY SECOND at first when she had free access to the house, and put her in her crate (with a stuffed kong toy) whenever I coudn't watch her. Her free time at first was 20 minutes - and there were failures with that short amount of time! Gradually build on that time. The mistakes I made along the way was making too big of time jumps. Then I'd have to go back to whatever previous time I was at where she was successful.
Having only had large dogs in my life I will say I found this process difficult. I had to reach deep inside for every ounce of patience I could find. I honestly think a lot of the training was just her bladder maturing enough to handle the "I gotta pee" pressure. I also want to add that when I was watching her and she started to squat I would clap my hands or say "ah! ah!" and take her out. This was enough of an aversive for her that she learned to squat when I was not looking (MY mistake, not hers). So, I would suggest making every effort for rewarded successful outings and avoiding aversives as much as possible.
For those of you struggling with housetraining - it can be done but it's all up to you!!
beth |