Potty training gone horribly wrong. From the first days of her 3 month old life we have struggled with how to handle her bathroom habits.
We did the Japanese thing by buying the “potty” mats that you put down lay a diaper sheet on it and try to convince her that this is the location to do her business. WRONG! She found more pleasure in playing with the diaper mat. If you ever want to know what those things are made of, I can tell you first hand that there are millions of little water absorbent beads that are just waiting to cling to some sort of moisture. So after a full day of being home alone, you could imagine what it was like to come home to a room full of beads that had soaked up the pee she had in different places. That room has been through hell and back.

The next thing we tried was to use some liquid that was supposed to target her to the mat. Sprinkle it on and they come running to put down their own scent. Again, WRONG! That just made her attack the mat even more. Hundreds of rolls of paper towel and liters of Pine Sol later, we gave up and began trying to convince her to at least go out on the balcony. She started doing that but still had the occasional Sammy spill on the tile floor.

You might be asking yourself why don’t you just take her out? Well here, you are told that the dog should not go outside until it has had it’s myriad of shots which take about 3 more months to complete. I know better, having grown up with dogs, but I wasn’t sure if they had some sort of Doggy version of 24’s CTU that would arrest us on the street. That was the most painful 3 months that I have ever gone through with a dog. She was going stir crazy and you really couldn’t get mad with her about it, so the balcony was our only option. It WORKED!

When we were finally allowed to go out and about with her, I began to walk her first thing in the morning and at night when I get home. It is a nice thing to do with your dog. Relaxing, calm and exercise to boot. What it turned out to be however, was a battle between us and Sammy. Why? She refuses to go to the bathroom out side on the walks. To date, she has only gone out side 2 times. That is only because I now take her out immediately after I feed her. Then if I walk slowly, she is sometimes at the mercy of her bowels. But not often. As soon as we get home, she bolts for the balcony to do her business.

I guess I should look at the bright side. She doesn’t go in the house anymore. But winter is coming and that means that we will have to pay more money to have the construction dude come back to install a dog door so we don’t have to leave the doors open all day like we do now. Thank god we live on the top floor of the building. But I will be damned if I am going to leave the doors open in the dead of winter. It will also be interesting to see how she deals with going outside in the cold. It will be her first year to experience it as a non-puppy. Sure there will be more to follow on this one.