The Sewing Mom

I know we’re not there yet, but it’s definitely improved!  Since I last posted on this subject we made some changes to our training techniques.  First, we put the dog on a leash.  She basically wears it all the time, unless she’s sleeping or in her crate.  When we go outside the leash helps us keep her focused on what she’s supposed to be doing.  She has a tendency to run into the bushes to chew on branches and mulch and this keep her from doing that.  The other problem was that we have rod iron fencing and she’s still small enough to fit through the bars so she like to go visit neighbors yards.  You know, she thinks the grass is greener on the other side!

The other thing we did was to start giving her treats when she does her business outside.  We had tried this earlier but she didn’t like the treats we had.  Now we found some she likes so it has definitely helped.   If she goes outside, we give her a treat, very simple.  She picked up on this very quickly.  I think she actually began faking us out!  She’d go to the door, we’d take her out, she’d squat for about 2 seconds and then look to us for her treat!  Sometimes she is too smart for her own good I think!

She does go to the back door when she needs to go, sometimes.  Other times she just goes in the vicinity of the back door which also happens to be where our kitchen table is.  This is confusing for all of us, including her, because we immediately start asking her if she needs to go out and she says yes so we go and then nothing happens.  We come back in and within a minute she’ll pee on the floor.  It’s very frustrating, but in the last few days the number of potty accidents has greatly reduced!  It would greatly help if I could figure out a way for her to actually tell us that she needs to go out other than me following her around and to the back door.  Sometimes she’s just passing by the door and I think she needs to go out so we go and nothing happens.  Other times, she’s 5 feet from the door so I don’t think she needs to go and then she squats on the floor.  The worst time of day is late afternoon, early evening.  For some reason she seems to pee about every 10-15 minutes!  It’s 109 degrees out and I can tell you, I don’t appreciate going outside so frequently!  I know she’s drinking a lot of water during the day but I don’t know why she has to go that often.  Does anyone have any ideas?