I feel your pain!!! I understand your dilemma!!! I will be the very first to say I have many more than a couple of dogs running around my home.....I have realized in order to maintain a resemblance of order in my home, dogs are limited to particular areas of the house....they do not run all over the house.....enables me to see what is going on. My sons cat litter box is kept in our laundry room....dogs do not have access to the kitchen or laundry room. Dogs are limited to the sun room area, where they have at least one set of eyes on them at all times. They go down for naps at noon until 4pm....this gives me time to do something besides watching dogs continuously and I can do a little housework and not worry about dogs getting into stuff! One word commands work well for us...."NO!", "outside", (that is the question for playtime outside, not limited strictly to potty time..), "TT" or "poo-poo" for bathroom breaks....."playtime" for runs around the yard to "help" when I do a little gardening in my pots and beds.......
"birds?" for attention to the birds flying all over the yard, eating the fruit on my fruit trees.....the pups LOVE chasing the birds up and down the fence.....my precious little Lexee that I lost earlier this year was my "bird dog" that adored nothing more than running all over the back yard, chasing all the birds!.....we have a few other one word commands that address things we do around here....."swim?" usually goes with filling up the kiddie pools, and they all gather around and wait with unbridled anticipation for the kiddie pools to get water in them!...."bubbles! Bubbles!!!" goes with the bubble machine and all the fun that ensues when that comes out!
Manners inside the house....."NO!" stops all activity! "Bedtime" lines dogs up to go to their crates for the night...."nap" lines dogs up to go to crates for mid day nap time.....I keep a rolled up paper right by my chair and I carry it with me all around the sun room....I use it 98% of the time, to slap loudly against my leg, accompanied by a stern "NO!", when they are doing anything they should not be doing. It is a constant thing, patrolling and policing these youngsters, and the only good thing is, it gets better quickly, IF you are persistent and consistent in correction! I have very seldom had to actually use a paper paddle on any tiny butts around here....chewing electrical cords is an instance that requires immediate, urgent, definitive, paper-to-butt corrective steps.....darting out doors is another thing that gets paper-to-butt corrective measures....for the most part, I just slap the paper on my leg and it works just fine...... Persistence, consistency and determination on your part is the key to early training....you can be "on" one minute, and let that same behavior slid by when pulled again later! |