The Sewing Mom

Damn dog!  I had all of my blogging related log-in information with passwords written down.  Somehow the dog, yes the cute little one I keep posting pictures of, ATE the piece of paper with all of that info on it!  I had no idea until I saw something on the carpet and when I picked it up I recognized a small corner that had my writing on it.  My daughter looked at me holding this little tiny piece of chewed up paper and she knew instantly what it was, her eyes got huge!

Well, I just figured there’s nothing I can do now, the deed is done.  So, I sat myself down with a piece of paper and pencil and from memory wrote the ones I could and then went back through all my notes from when my sister was originally setting up my blog and found some I was missing.  What a total pain in the butt!  I better find a cute picture to look at so I don’t kill the dog!

How about this one?

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There has been so much in the news about designer dogs recently.  I only know that we now own one!  We decided to get a puggle, half pug, half beagle.  She will grow to be about 15 inches tall and around 25 lbs.  We’ve had her about 3 months and she is about 1/2 her full size.

 She’s quite smart too, we always see the wheels turning in that head of hers.  She’s always thinking of her next move and she’s a stalker.  We think she’s also part cat!  We’re still having potty issues, but they have improved.  We changed her food this week too hoping that will help.

We do enjoy having her and I thought I’d share this picture of her.  You can see, she’s thinking hard about her next move!

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Okay, we’ve had Plinko with us now for about three months and she is STILL NOT POTTY TRAINED!  I am getting so frustrated.  She can be so good, but she still goes in the house once or twice every day.  She is so very smart and yet she doesn’t seem to get this whole idea of needing to do her business outside!

This morning I took her out and I even sat outside for a while with her until I got too hot and came in.  She stayed out another 20 minutes or so before she came and scratched at the door wanting in.  I let her in and sat back down on the sofa and she promptly walked in front of me and peed!  I couldn’t believe it, she’d been inside an entire 30 seconds, if that long!  I ran back to the door calling for her and she sat staring at me.   I finally got her out and carried her out to the yard and nothing happened.  She started wandering around the yard so I finally came back inside without her. 

Now, just a few minutes ago, she came scratching at the door to get in, I let her in.  About 20 seconds went by and she went back and stood at the door looking at me.  I let her out and she went out and peed!  Go figure.  Why will she do it sometimes and not others?  I’m at a loss as to how to make it get better.

By the way, did you notice that when she wants to come IN, she scratches at the door.  When she wants to go OUT, she just sort of stands there.  Usually, if we don’t happen to see her standing at the door, she’ll just pee right where she’s standing.  Mind you, you have about a 10 second window from the time she gets to the door to the time you open the door before she just pees on the floor.  I don’t get as frustrated with this only because I feel like at least she is going to the door!  It’s when she pees on the carpet, making no effort to get outside, that I get frustrated. 

Thanks for letting me vent!

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Oh how I wish I had had my camera with me this morning.  It’s such a beautiful morning, very low humidity for a change and the temperature is in the upper 60’s!  Unbelievable!  It’s such a relief that I decided to spend some time just sitting outside and enjoying it, put off housework and laundry to enjoy this beautiful day.

So, I’m sitting in a chair with my feet up doing some updating on my blog while my puppy Plinko is running around the yard keeping herself very busy.  She just loves being outside and we’ve learned that the more time she spends outside during the day, the more tired she is in the evenings which is usually when she goes into hyper mode.  So, this morning is a win win situation for the both of us.

I have to take a moment to describe our in ground swimming pool.  It is basically rectangular in shape with a slide on one end and steps on the other.  On one long side it has a small half circle shaped sitting ledge that juts out about 2 feet.  On the other long side is a ledge that runs the full length of the pool, about 8 inches deep in the water.  This same side as decorative stone built up about 12 inches high above the pool with landscaping all behind it, no pool entry from this side. 

Well, with all that landscaping it is actually one of Plinko’s favorite places in the yard to play.  She has also discovered that there are frogs that like to hide out in those bushes and she enjoys finding them.  When she does, they of course dive over the ledge, into the pool.  This is always very entertaining unless you happen to be in the pool at the time! 

Okay, back to the point.  As I’m sitting here enjoying my morning, Plinko is enjoying herself searching through the mulch and bushes on the back side of the pool.  She frequently pops out and stands on the ledge looking at me, just to make sure I’m still here.  Except this time, for some reason, as she was looking at me she decided to take a step forward, forgetting she was at the edge of the ledge and she stepped right off, dropping the 12 inches into the water!  Now, she has been in the pool a couple of times with us, but never by herself, and we’re usually either holding on to her or she’s on a float.  This time, she found herself having to swim, by herself!

I quickly jumped up and ran to the end of the pool closest to where she was.  Thankfully she realized her feet could touch the underwater ledge so she was standing on her back feet holding her front paws against the side of the pool to hold her head up.  I could have stepped into the pool had she freaked out, but as soon as she saw me and I called her name she began swimming towards me, about 4 feet away.  She did it!  She probably actually could have walked on the ledge the whole distance, but she didn’t realize that.  I pulled her out and of course she shook water all over me but she was happy, not scared.  She then zoomed around the yard for about twenty minutes, guess she felt refreshed from her dip!

I think it’s about time to go in for her nap.  I just wish I had been able to get a picture of her swimming, she did just fine!

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Plinko’s is growing so much and so fast!  She had her 2nd vet visit last week and weight 10 lbs, that almost double what she weighed one month previous.  We are still putting eyedrops in her eyes to help her tear ducts develop, but it’s nothing serious and other than that she’s very healthy.  The vet just loves her, he goes on and on about her when he sees her and likes to hug her!  It’s rather funny since he is an older gentleman to see him gush over her the way he does. 

Her potty training is going pretty well too.  She’s had one accident free day and most days usually only has one or two accidents in the house and they usually tend to be right in front of the back door.  She just needs to figure out that she needs to whine or something so we know she’s at the door!  We did learn at puppy training that it helps to not leave their water out all day and night, so we’ve started picking it up around 7 in the evening.  This is around the time she usually gets pretty hyper and has her accidents, so picking up the water just means she has less liquid to get rid of and it has definitely helped.

Her personality is really coming out, she’s actually very funny.  One thing she does that always makes us laugh is when she watches t.v..  She usually just sits and watches whatever catches her attention, but yesterday a trained dog was on the television and it caught her eye.  I think she wanted to play with this other dog and was mad because she couldn’t get to it.  I snapped a quick picture while we were laughing.

My daughter and I took Plinko to her second puppy class today at PetSmart. My daughter missed last week because she was in California, so she was a little nervous about it today. Plinko on the other hand was so excited, she loves to socialize which she began doing from the moment she set foot inside the store! She wins over the heart of every single person she sees and just approaches anybody. She’s very friendly to say the least.

We got to the store a little bit early so we could purchase a few supplies, including a new collar since she’s all ready just about grown out of the first one we bought her. My daughter also made Plinko her first dog tag, a gold bone,  out of a machine where you type in the information and the machine engraves it right before your eyes. The kids all love this and think it’s fascinating! After making our purchases, we headed off to class.

Plinko was again the biggest dog there, mind you, she weighs a whopping 10 lbs! There were 3 other dogs there today, a 10 week old Beagle named Lacy, a chiwawa named Spike and an Italian greyhound, I didn’t catch it’s name (her owner wasn’t too friendly). All these other dogs are very cute and they’re fun to watch. First we reviewed our lessons from last week, getting the dog to “watch me” or look into your eyes. This is done with bribery of course as are all the lessons in class! Next we went on to teach the “sit” command. I was so happy that my daughter had taken it upon herself yesterday to teach this to Plinko, it made them both look very smart indeed! Finally, we started on loose leash walking. This I know is going to be our challenge, almost as hard as potty training! Plinko wears her leash all day long so we can quickly get outside when we need to, but she doesn’t really like walking with us holding on to the other end and directing where she goes. She likes to choose her own path. Our final instruction today were that by next Saturday, we and our dog should be excellent loose leash walkers. Hmmmm, I see a tough week ahead!

Same as last week, by the time we got home Plinko was bone tired. She’s been asleep for almost 2 hours! All that socializing and learning just wears her out, I wish we could do it every day!!

So, what do you think, would it be better to practice our leash walking in our big back yard or should we take to the road?

We completed day one of puppy training at PetSmart.  I was surprised that there were only 2 other puppies in class besides Plinko.  One was a chiwawa named Spike and the other was a beagle named Lacy.  They were both very cute (well, as cute as a chiwawa can get) and to my surprise, Plinko was the biggest dog in class!  She looked huge compared to the other two.  Plinko was also the most sociable one in class.  She kept going across and visiting with the other dogs and the other humans.  It was very funny!  So the first class consisted of learning how to train with a cue, in this case, using a clicker.  Me personally, I found the clicker to be very annoying, and I’m still not sure if I’m going to use it.  The reason behind it makes sense, with 3 of us in the house trying to train one dog, all of our voices are different, so a clicker allows for consistency.  However, there is only one clicker, so chances are we won’t all have access to it all the time.  Yep, seems I’m leaning away from using the clicker.  The second item was to train the dog to pay attention to you, the human.  This means that you’re training the dog to  look you in the face when you call their name.  We do have homework, none of which I’ve started yet!  My intention was to start this morning, but I sort of forgot.  As the day has progressed, it’s been a good day as far as potty training goes, so I don’t feel like messing with a good thing.  I’ll get to it before next Saturday’s class, I promise!

Our little puggle puppy Plinko is growing so much.  She’s getting so much taller, I think she’s twice as tall as she was when we brought her home 3 1/2 weeks ago.    I think she will double her current size before she’s fully mature.  She is absolutely crazy too!  She follows us everywhere, we have to make sure all doors are closed and hallways blocked off.  She’s very fast, so if you see her in one spot and look away, she’s probably moved by the time you look back.  This is cute, except for when you’re trying to relax, you have to keep a constant eye on her.   I bought a new memory card at Best Buy today so I was able to take some updated pictures.  She doesn’t hold still unless she’s sleeping, so these were a little tough to capture. 

This picture is bad but it totally captured Plinko running directly at me as fast as she can (see her ears flying in the wind!).  She then leaps onto me, so if you’re not paying attention, she’ll take you out!!

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?

Okay, I’m really starting to feel like I’m not doing something right in this whole house breaking thing.  Plinko is now 9 weeks old and we’ve had her at home with us for 2 1/2 weeks.  It seems I’m cleaning up more potty messes now than I was 2 weeks ago, very frustrating. 

This morning is a perfect example.  I let Plinko out of her crate this morning where she’d made it through the night with no accidents (thus, I know she’s capable of holding it).  I took her straight outside where she peed and then had 2 poops.  This is her usual morning ritual, the one time when we are successful.   We came back inside where I gave her her breakfast and I put on a pot of coffee.   I then sat down on the family room floor with her to play, she’s only eaten a few bites of her breakfast.   After a total elapsed time of 10 minutes, I got up to get a cup of coffee in the kitchen and found, to my dismay, 2 piles by the kitchen table.   Mind you, the table is next to the back door, so I am assuming she at least went to the door.  She doesn’t bark or whine or anything, so if I don’t actually see her go to the door than I guess I’m doomed. 

 I cleaned up the messes and then, she was acting like she needed to go, so I put her on her leash (which she thinks is something to hold in her mouth) and took her out.  We spent about 10 minutes outside and nothing.  So here we sit, on the family room floor, I’m typing out my frustrations and she’s laying at my feet chewing on her leash. 

My goal today is to go buy a couple of gates, one to block of the hallway to the front door/dining room and the other to block off the stairs.  It seems that the more area she gains in her explorations, the worse the training goes so I am going to minimize where she can get to.   My family room & kitchen are basically one big open area so that’s where we spend our days hanging out. 

If anyone has any suggestions please let me know!  I’ve heard of putting a bell on the doorknob and training the dog to tap the bell when she needs to go out.  Has anyone done this and did it work?