House-Broken Breakthrough!
Dog lovers, I have had a breakthrough!
A little background. When I brought Tyler, the Australian Blue Heeler, home, he was about four months old. He was house-broken in about four days. Heelers are a smart breed.
It took Zeus, the German Shepherd, a little longer.
So when Tristan came along at Christmas, a cute black and gray blob of fur, I figured he’d be house-broken in a week.
Two weeks later, Leigh and I were still working on him, failing miserably. He’d run down to the front door and poop. He peed anywhere he happened to be. We were buying paper towels by the gross at Sam’s Club just to keep up with the large pee puddles.
We watched him, of course, but he’s a sneaky little guy and as soon as we did something like, say, blink, he’d pee. I’d take him outside and run him around, and he’d pee. We’d come back into the house and he’d finish peeing.
How can one puppy process so much water?
Slowly, he began going to the sliding glass door in the kitchen and we would literally run to it because as soon as he gave us the signal, he also peed. We had about 2.5 seconds to respond.
This morning he trotted to the sliding glass door, scratched on it and sat waiting. I was very suspicious. This was too good to be true. It was a trick. I opened the door, he walked out — and peed.
I swear I almost got teary-eyed. We were one step further down the road of progress.
Do you remember when your kids were finally potty trained and you had these really mixed feelings of relief because the end of diapers was in sight, yet your heart was heavy because it meant they were growing up?
That’s how I felt.
I’m not kidding.
The sadness doesn’t come close to the joy of not having to go through another two dozen rolls of paper towels.
January 20, 2007, 10:06 a.m. A moment to remember.
Oh, by the way, here’s some updated shots of Tristan “The Devil Dog.”