Quote:
Originally Posted by Marta_n_Chanel  Does she not get thirsty or hungry when she's in the cage for 4 hours?
I'm curious to know how you managed to train her that fast.
Also PS I like her name, its like she's a name counterpart to my Chanel. |
Marta - You know it all depends, sometimes she likes to eat all her food at breakfast and sometimes she doesn't, so depending on the day, really depends if she is hungry or not, typically I will make note of how much she is eating at any given time and try to supplement that with snacks at a later time, for instance little breakfast, than I give her extra snacks for being good or doing good things like potty or give her a little extra food for her next meal.
To answer your question on how we managed to train her fast is my girlfriend and I read about 11 books from the library on Yorkshires prior to her coming to us, than we found many people that owned multiple Yorkies in the area through friends (trust me when I say everyone knows someone that has a yorkie) than we actually took notes and were tentative to people's advice, the funny thing is everyone's method was different and not a single person did the same things. So through the first 2 weeks we did a test run with different methods we learned and eventually came up with a hybrid of all that seemed to click. I have mentioned this in another thread but for the potty trained part, it clicked really quick for her, literally and I am not exergerating, about 1 week and half she picked up on it.
I created a bathroom basically, imagine 3 plastic gates that are attached in which I make a U shape so there is only one opening. If you look at my schedule from the first post I put of when I would come home and take her out, what I would do is take her out at all given times, but I believe the trick was I never dropped her in the area, I would start on the other side of the room from the bathroom area and walk her over, but heres the thing I learned the hard way, when I was first doing this she didn't care and just went while we were going over there, so to stop her from doing this, I would literally bend over cradle her back underside and walk with her, I used the analogy on the other thread, like a doggie wheel barrel walk. She it forced her to walk where I was pointing her, I did this straight for one week, didn't try testing her or anything, just did the cage than wheelbarrel about 4-5 times a day for a week straight, didn't let her out long only when we play and when she was supervised, so was in crate alot. On that following Monday I got brave and basically got on my knees and prayed, I let her out put her down on the opposite side of the room, began making my lunch cause I was home from work and there is goes, she walked over there pee'd and poop'd and than came over and started playing with me. That was about 3 weeks ago and since than she has been good, but don't get me wrong she has had her random accidents as we expect from puppies. So outside of the whole peeing in crate thing she has been really good. Oh and of course she got lots of praise and treats while this training was going on.
So some things that did not work for us, in case anyone reading this is in the midst of training:
1. Outside because unfortunately by the time we got her it was already cold so she sat there and stared at me with a look like "are you crazy?" Something I will work on when it gets warm
2. Placing pads in random places, I think she appreciated the consistency, because when we got her we were clueless so it was almost like "where is she"....."I don't care wherever she is put a pad there"
3. Letting her out every 20 minutes, because we were doing this we could not pick up on her pattern, but once we slowed this down and became more observate and trust me when I say we had an excel sheet writing down times, did we realize its not about how many times you let them go its about when you let them go and sure enough she never failed us.
4. Keeping her on a single pad, saying the word potty a gizillion times, one thing Ive learned if they don't have to go, they aren't going to go, which in many cases I sat there for hours at a time pretty much begging her at that point.
Theres some more but my brain is fried from writing this novel to you guys, which I hope no one gets mad for having to read my unorganized thoughts on this forum.
One thing to say is there is hope, I almost cried when I see all these people say its impossible to train a Yorkie, but my little girl seems to be doing better than I anticipated.
Also the name CoCo, we were original suppose to get a boy (but we wanted a girl) we came to the house of the breeder and uh oh she gave her a bath to give to us and turns out the wee wee disappeared, so needless to say anyone with the a dog named Dallas (orginally his name, hence VA Cowboy, I am a big cowboys fan) I have dog tags I had engraved that I no longer can use! :-)