We have learned many valuable lessons over the past year from our precious little Poshy Poo. My favorite (and the most important): Spare the Rod, Spoil the Dog. I should have guessed that the same people who are against disciplining children with the occasional spanking were behind the “don’t spank your dog” movement. They are wrong. Spanking works on good ol’ Posh.
We went away for vacation in April and I think our dog, in an act of revenge for leaving her (although she was in very good hands), managed to un-housebreak herself as soon as she got home. It has been almost three months since then and we had to go back to the drawing board with training her. Waiting by the glass door for ten minutes and waiting for her to pee, teaching her exactly what she did wrong when she has an accident, and, yes, the occasional spanking when her rebellion was particularly apparent. The training was kicked into high gear when we realized we didn’t want our new carpet to smell like our old carpet. Talk about motivation.
So over the last two days I have been enjoying some rewards of all this hard work. She is finally learning! She is still having accidents but, slow but sure, she’s having less and less. And the time I spend waiting for her to “do her thing” outside is getting shorter, which makes me happy. Very happy.
So what have mommy and daddy learned through all this? Train your kids now…it may be hard work but you’ll reap the rewards! (Hmmmm sounds familiar…train up a child the way she should go and when she is old she will not depart from it.) We realize we were sort of pushovers with Posh and we definitely learned that the hard way. Fortunately we messed up on our dog and hopefully it will give us some small bit of insight when we have to decide what to do with the human we will be in charge of.
Who am I kidding…we will still be clueless, but at least while we’re figuring out what to do with our kid we will have a better behaved dog.
Funny. Sparkie was untraining himself too. We were finding his #2′s on a somewhat regular basis. And once we realized that he was getting up in the middle of the night to find a spot to do #1′s on the living room carpet, we got his crate back out. It is working and we are reaping the rewards of our efforts as well.
It has even helped with his attitude, which was getting a little bit on the pushy side. Crate training works for me.
Pam, I agree wholeheartedly. When Posh sleeps in the crate, we are happy “parents,” and I figure the happier we are, the happier she is. So it all comes back to her in the end
Glad to hear my dogs not the only one who slipped in her training!