Puppy Toilet Training Troubleshooting

If any of you with older dogs cast your minds back to those heady days of puppy toilet training I am sure you can recall some frustration at the very least if not manage a shudder of revulsion for the cleaning up of numerous accidents. I myself remember being late for work a few times because I was cleaning up puddles in my carpet. The current trend to polished floor boards certainly makes life a lot easier for many families. Of course puppy cuteness makes up for just about everything, even a chewed couch in my case.

So what can we do to get the best out of puppies toileting behaviour? One of the first things to do is to put in perspective just what we expect of puppies compared to what we expect of our children. Our children can take a couple of years to successfully toilet train (imagine the mess if we did not have nappies, eeek, it's not worth thinking about is it?). It takes toddlers quite a while to learn to control their bladders and to know how soon to go to the toilet before they need to go. Ask any parent how many accidents their toddlers have some days. Puppies are no different they take about 6 months to get full bladder control, despite the fact we expect them to become continent in a few short days or weeks. So patience is one of the most important things you can arm yourself with when walking through the mine filed (like that imagery?) of puppy toilet training.

So what can we do? Naturally dogs have a dislike of urinating or defecating near their beds, so they will naturally try to move away from their beds to go to the toilet.The trick is trying to anticipate their need to "wee" and "poo". You can do this as soon as you bring the puppy home, introduce the puppy to the spot outside where you want the puppy to go and wait there until it goes. Give it a food reward and introduce a toileting word like "wee wees" or "bananas" if you prefer a more neutral word so that it learns what you expect from it when you take it outside. If the puppy does not go, take it indoors and try again in 10-15 minutes.

Sniffing or circling behaviours are common indicators of the puppy tying to find a place to toilet. Other times to take the puppy outside are first thing when it wakes up, after or even during play time, after eating or drinking, being in the car and of course just before bed time. There will be accidents but with positive reinforcement ( treats and kind words of praise) when your puppy toilets outside and an avoidance of angry reactions (which only confuses the dog and gives it a complex about toileting in front of you) your puppy will eventually get the hang of going in the right spot-outside. Some people leave newspapers down in one spot, say the laundry, so the puppy can go there, but essentially you want the dog to learn to go outside, so that technique is really only a transitional training stage which some people may prefer to avoid.

If your puppy has most of its accidents overnight you may need to get up every 4-5 hours to take him or her outside to give the puppy the opportunity to do the right thing. You may need to set an alarm, especially if the dog is not sleeping in your room. Don't forget the puppy is used to being with its litter-mates, so it is likely to be lonely and have anxiety sleeping by itself. If you do have the puppy in a bed or crate in your room you can put a little cat bell on its collar overnight so that when it starts to move around to get up to toilet you can take it outside.

With a bit of consistency and positive encouragement your puppy will hopefully not give you too many interrupted nights. If your puppy does not seem to be doing so well with toileting as all the other puppies in puppy school do not worry, some puppies just take longer to learn and get bladder control than others. If you are really worried ask the vet for a check up to see if there is any source of infection that may be preventing better toileting. In most cases all that is needed is a big dose of patience, a deep breath and a few puppy cuddles to get things into perspective.

Enjoy your new puppy!

Georgeous Cavalier King Charles Spaniel learning how to use a Spinning Treat Toy

Jess learning how to use this new enrichment toy. It gets harder when you put the lock pegs in.....

Have a great weekend in this sunny Melbourne weather!

All my best,
Michelle

How to keep your pets happy when you are at work

So how do you keep your pets from chewing up the garden or destroying the furniture out of boredom while you are away? Okay so it is mainly dogs that do the most damage in the home and garden, there is nothing worse than coming home to 100 little bits of polystyrene in the backyard from a box that the dog found in the house and dragged out to destroy in the yard. Hmmn, sound familiar. Well I suppose that is why dog walkers like me stay in business.

If only they could amuse themselves playing pool all day or better still, cleaning the house. Well the first thing to do is give your dog a breed suitable walk a day. So a Kelpie or working dog is obviously going to need a lot more mental stimulation and exersize than a more sedentary breed. Want to get fit yourself, give them two walks. I always think of their walks as their time though, I never hurry a dog from sniffing or marking as I figure this is the dog expressing their natural behaviour. After all they spend so much time alone when all they want is to be near us. A safe off-lead park is perfect for them to investigate their surroundings and get all their scenting satisfaction, after all their sense of smell is much much much more highly attuned and important to them than it is to us. The other thing dogs enjoy is training with us or learning something new like flyball. If you have the time on the weekend something like this can be social for you as well as rewarding for your dog. Check out this flyball blog, it has a link to the Australian flyball Association: http://www.flyballblog.com/flyball-training-manual/

The key to keeping your dog or cat happy is letting them enjoy their natural behaviours, so for a dog who in the wild would spend up to 80% of their time foraging and hunting for food this can mean that food puzzles are perfect for keeping them entertained. 

It makes them work for their food and gives them a mental challenge while they are doing it. Treats frozen in cubes can be fantastic in summer as well as Kongs ( I am not advocating any particular brand it is just that most people know what a Kong is) stuffed with food instead of freely given in a bowl (food an be frozen in a Kong too to increase the difficulty) can help bust the boredom. I would never leave food out for a dog during the day unless it was a very tiny amount and the dog only grazes a little at a time. Some dogs really do have self control. I know...its rare but true. I recently bought my dog some spinny food toys at the Dog Lovers Show in Melbourne. It was not just fun for her it was great fun for me to watch her figure it out. I often do a mini treat scatter at clients backyards before I leave so the dogs can forage for the treats. It keeps them amused for a little while and is great for separation anxiety. If a dog knows it is getting something good when you leave you leaving is not so bad that you leave after all.

Cats need enrichment toys too, especially if they are exclusively indoor cats. Not the least of these is a really good scratchy pole, equiped with a few levels, a tunnel and a top perch to watch the world on. Put the pole by a window and they can watch the birds without the birds needing to be at risk. Chasing, hunting toys are great for cats as they cater to their natural instincts, so mini mice or feathery objects are great for throwing and chasing in the house. A great thing for either cats and dogs is a table tennis ball, they can swat them around and they bounce of walls and objects so they can chase them again. Awesome fun and it only costs the price of a table tennis ball. Cats also have ball spinny toys too, I have seen a popular one where  they can spin a little ball around in a circle on a plastic mount until it whirs around like a dervish. A little imagination and you can make your own toys for dogs or cats. Do you have a great idea for one you would like to share?