To newproudmom, don't worry so much about your pup being afraid of the bell(s)... we plugged away at it for weeks, despite the apparent fear of the bell. Then one day, Nikko just decided to let us know he wanted to go out all on his own by pawing at the bell. We have had almost no indoor accidents since then, and we don't really even watch him anymore - it's awesome!!!
But AvyQuinn, we have a similar problem to you as well... Our neighbor has an amazingly patient and well-adjusted cairn terrier named Klaus who is Nikko's newest best friend. When Klaus comes over here to play, Nikko is still awesome - even at the height of playtime, he rings the bell if he has to pee or poop. However, when we take him over to the neighbor's house, he'll just go over about a few feet from his front door, and poop or pee like it's totally cool. Our neighbor's house's layout is literally an exact mirror image of our own house (and fairly small too btw), and we always bring Nikko's bell over and hang it right by the door just like it is in our house. And when we're over there and think Nikko might have to pee, we ring the bell before we take him out, just like at home. But he just doesn't understand! :-(
Our neighbor is totally patient and understanding, so long as we clean up the mess, so that's really great. But I don't want to clean up messes anymore, lol! And I do like going over to his place - it makes our doggies happy, and we get to watch his cable TV. We don't have a ton of money, so we chose getting our wonderful Nikko over having cable TV this year :-)
Lauren & Nikko |