The Poopsicle Conundrum

I have been a blogging slacker. I'm sorry. I started writing a post on where to acquire a canine friend and it just got to be to preachy and not funny, so I lost my mojo. The basic gist was - get a dog from a shelter or rescue group. Never get a dog from a pet store. If you absolutely have to have a specific breed and you can't find an available rescue, then do your research about breeders. Make sure they take their dogs back if something goes wrong or doesn't work out, and make sure they do the appropriate genetic testing for the breed they are breeding. Okay, that was way simpler and not nearly as preachy.

Now, lets deal with some training issues, which I think are far more fun anyway! A friend of mine lives in the great state of Minnesota and has a little dog that we'll call 'Henry'. Henry isn't so keen on going outside in the winter to poo, so there are frequently mishaps in the house. I can totally understand Henry's perspective. He's thinking "It's effin' COLD out there and I have the body mass of a turkey. I've seen what happens to turkeys in the freezer at home and it ain't pretty! I'll just 'take a moment' over here in the corner and hope I won't get into too much trouble. Even if she does yell at me it's still better than what happens to those turkeys!" Even though I am sympathetic to Henry's plight, this really isn't a behavior we want to encourage, even if his presents are the size of tootsie rolls. So what's a Minnesotan to do?

The first thing to do is control Henry's access to indoor places that he might want to fertilize. You can't stop a problem that you aren't there to see. He should be kept close by his humans so they can keep an eye on what he's doing and thinking. If he starts sniffing around or showing his other potty cues, then he needs to be scooped up and taken outside. Yes, this can be a frustrating process, especially in the winter when the human doesn't really want to go out either. So how do we make it more bearable? REWARDS of course!! Rewards for both the dog and the human. The dog gets something special when he poops outside. Make sure this reward is extra special awesome, something he doesn't usually get! Remember that the value of a reward is determined by the receiver, not the giver. Personally, I wouldn't be excited by a reward of beer, but reward me with a chocolate martini or a Diet Coke and now we're talkin'! So what would your dog risk homelessness to steal off the table if it could? Butter? Bits of hot dog? Turkey sandwich meat? Cheese? Cookies (I've met a dog before with a sweet tooth)? Tuna? Filet Mignon? Hamburger?

Whatever you choose, have some on hand where it's easy to get on the way out the door. If it's okay to be frozen you could keep a stash of it outside since it's winter. Many dogs like frozen treats. It's important to have it with you because you need to reward your dog immediately once they've taken care of their business. Waiting to give your dog a treat when you get inside is merely rewarding your dog for being inside. In the winter in Minnesota, being inside is its own reward!

Unless you are totally OCD about putting your coat away in closet that is inaccessible to dogs, I don't recommend keeping your treats in your coat pocket. I left some treats in the pocket of my LL Bean parka once. Courtney discovered the coat hanging on the back of a chair and proceeded to extract the treats from the pocket. Being a Border Collie, one might expect her to figure out how open the pocket so that no damage was done to the coat. Sadly, this story doesn't have that kind of ending. She chose the brute force method and went through the front of the coat to acquire the goodies. Lesson learned: Don't keep treats in coat pockets. Got it!

While we are on the subject of coats, make sure your dog is properly attired while they are outside.  There are lots of dogs that do not need sweaters or coats, but there are also lots that do.  You know your dog best, if they are acting cold then get them a sweater or a coat.  I keep Zinger in a sweater all winter, even when he's inside.  I also have a coat that I will put on him when it's particularly cold out or we are going to be out for a long time.  The nice thing about the 'all the time' sweater is he can go zooming out the back door after the squirrels with me having to futz around putting his coat on him first.  Comet doesn't mind the cold one bit and prefers to not wear a sweater.   In the springtime, when sweater season is over, your dog will look naked when you first take the sweater off.  You've been warned, do not be alarmed.

When faced with the daunting task of choosing fashions for your canine model, be sure to keep the practical in mind.  How easy will this be to put on?  Will it be comfortable?  Does my dog really need pockets that he can't reach? (I mean really...Pockets? On the back of a dog sweater? )  Is there adequate "urine stream" clearance?  Begin Rant:  Seriously, whose idea was it to make sweaters for boy dogs that cover their private parts?! The bottom of a sweater should always come down to the end of the rib cage and then stop.  I can't count the number of times I've thought "Oh what a cute sweater! That color will look great on Zinger!" only to turn it over to see that it will look great on Zinger until he needs to pee!  After that it may still look great but it will be wet and stinky!  There is no excuse for making a sweater that the dog is guaranteed to pee on!  Last I checked dogs all over the world have their private parts in the same places, so really, regardless of whatever country the sweater is made in, it should still have accommodations made for something so obvious! Sheesh! End Rant.


As a budding canine fashion connoisseur you may also consider shoes.  Keep in mind though they take a while to put on, so they aren't necessarily good for what we are trying to accomplish here.  They are GREAT for the guaranteed comedic "dog learning to walk with shoes on" episode you will get to witness the first several times your dog wears them!  

So what about that reward for the human? Pick something that you don't normally allow yourself to have.  Chocolate? Potato Chips? Starbucks Grande Decaf Soy Vanilla Latte? Sex with George Clooney and Brad Pitt (if you're into that kind of thing)?  Reading Shakespeare in the Old English?  Doing math for fun (I kid you not, I know people who do this)?

You can choose to reward yourself the entire time you are outside with your dog (which could be interesting given some of the above options), or you can choose to reward yourself inside when your dog is finished. You get to reward yourself every time, regardless of the, {ahem}, outcome. Why?  Because the behavior you are rewarding in yourself is "spotting signs your dog should go out and then taking your dog out even though it's cold and you don't want to".

If you are having trouble knowing when your dog needs to go out, I highly recommend putting up a 'potty bell'. You can pay a ridiculous amount of money and buy one made specifically for this purpose, or you can make your own. I'm cheap, so I made my own. Go to the craft store and buy a jingle bell or two and some ribbon. You may even be able to mooch these items off a crafty friend or relative! String the bells on the ribbon and and hang it on the doorknob. Make sure it's low enough that your dog can reach it standing on all fours. Before you open the door to go out, take your dog's paw and ring the bell with it. Open the door and out you go. It will not take long at all for your dog to associate ringing the bell with an opening door!  This is how I potty trained all of my dogs and I swear by it!

If you would like to reduce the quantity of butt nuggets your dog generates, then switch your dog to a prey model raw diet. Feed them 2-3% of their body weight daily with raw meaty meat with a little raw bone, and a little raw organ meat. The whole point is to feed them like their wolf cousins eat in the wild. This is how my dogs eat and they are very healthy. They have no breath or body odor and they only leave me amorphous deposits every couple of days. Best of all, it quickly disintegrates naturally so I don't have to pick up in my yard!  When kibble fed dogs visit I'm always astounded at how many backyard bungalows they generate!

Here's the medical caveat - if your dog has been doing fine going potty outside in the winter and then starts to have accidents indoors, a visit to the vet is in order. Any dramatic changes to potty behavior can indicate a problem and should be checked by your vet before beginning any training modification.

Drop me a line if you have questions or ideas or other euphemisms for 'poop'! 

At heart, I'm really just a CONTROL FREAK.

Last week in my discussion of self rewarding behaviors, I brought up the concept of “controlling a behavior”. Part of the reason I love dogs so much is because they are sentient beings. They have brains and they use them all the time! Just like us, they spend lots time using their brains to figure out how to get what they want. Sometimes, what they want and what we want are two different things. Sometimes we can train them to want what we want, sometimes we can’t. Regardless, if a behavior is unwanted or dangerous, it needs to be controlled at the very least. Even if you plan to train it away, you need to control it until the training is solid – as I said before if the dog is allowed to continue the undesired behavior it will be harder to train away.

So, what does it mean to 'Control' a behavior? Simple - don't give your dog the opportunity to do it! Before I go into more detail, I’m going to tell you what it DOESN'T mean: controlling a behavior doesn't mean banishing your dog from the house and keeping them outside all of the time. Dogs are pack animals, if you aren't willing to fully welcome them into your life and home then don't get one. It also doesn't mean keeping them crated or in a separate room all the time. That's just an indoor version of banishing them outdoors. That being said - the crate can be a useful tool, so please don't think I'm against crates. I'm not. I currently crate Comet when I'm out of the house because he's been on a chewing jag.

Now onto appropriate forms of controlling behaviors! None of these are rocket science. In fact, they can keep you from wanting to put your dog on the next rocket to the moon after they dig a hole in your sofa while you’re gone! Zinger is lucky I didn’t have a rocket handy after he dug a large hole in our sofa. Granted it was extenuating circumstances - lightning hit the tree in our yard. He also climbed up the bookshelf to get the box of Barbie’s off the top shelf so he could chew off their legs. He apparently was very freaked out.

Some of the most basic control methods are things we probably should be doing anyway - closing the lid on the toilet seat, putting our shoes away when we take them off, keeping the kitchen counters clear of food and dirty dishes, picking up after ourselves. Dagnabbit our Mothers were right! Damn!

Sometimes you need to make use of physics - dogs, with the exception of Comet (although he doesn't know how to control it) cannot transport themselves through solid objects. In other words - make use of doors, baby gates, and your body.

• Keep your shoes, those magically smelly chew toys, closed up in a closet.
• Litterboxes can be kept in rooms with a cat sized door flap. This works well unless you have a small dog - in that case, you may need to have one of those door flaps with a radio key that hangs on the cat's collar. I've heard of cats training dogs to come stand next to the radio key doggie doors so the cat can sneak outside, but I have yet to hear of a dog training a cat to do the same for access to the kitty litter.
• Keep the dogs inside when the mailman is coming so they don't charge him from the bushes.
• Use your body to prevent access to things. If your older dog likes to steal the puppy’s food, use your body to keep the older dog away from the puppy until the puppy is done eating. If the older dog tries to move around you, move with purpose to keep the older dog away. Use your whole body, standing up straight, not your arms or hands. Patricia McConnell, in her book “The Other End Of The Leash”, calls this a “body block”. The book is fantastic and it should be on everyone’s must read list, just for the body block alone! I’ve used the body block with my dogs on many occasions. I’ve seen dogs use it on each other and on humans! It’s a natural part of their doggie language, which is why it works so well. When my children were babies, I was out for a walk with my border collie, Courtney. As we were walking we ran into a neighbor and stopped to chat. Courtney put herself between the person and the stroller and wouldn’t move. She didn’t make a sound and wasn’t the slightest bit aggressive. She didn’t need to be. She was using her physical presence to keep the person she didn’t know away from the baby.
• Provide lots of appropriate things to chew.
• Keep your dog in the same room as you if you can't trust them to wander the house on their own. You can use doors, gates, or a loose leash attached to your waist. You can use your body to block the doorway when you see the dog try to wander away. He’ll get the message. Be aware of your dog’s mood though. Sometimes dogs need a break especially if your environment is crazy or the human kids are running amok. If a nap is appropriate and you can't trust them alone, then give them some crate time but don't forget about them! Naps can be particularly important for puppies.

Safety – when using physics, always keep safety in mind. Never leash your dog to anything and then leave. If your dog is tied up or leashed you need to be there to supervise. If you are using a gate, you need to make sure it is solid and not jumpable or climbable. Don’t underestimate the acrobatic abilities of your canine! Doors can be chewed, some dogs are very resourceful and can undo latches, catches, and some doorknobs. Know your dog and be honest about what it’s capable of when you’re not home.

Sometimes to control a behavior you might need to be creative. Some examples:

• Zinger had decided that while we weren't home, it was 'okay' to go poo in the basement. He didn't do it when we were home and if we blocked off access to the basement he didn't poo upstairs. I will eventually solve the behavioral mystery of that, but in the mean time I was getting tired of cleaning poo when I got home! So, we installed a 1/2 wall-height door at the top of our basement stairs. The baby gate was too low and was therefore jumpable. A full door would have looked ridiculous. We bought a heavy door at a salvage sale and cut and finished it to the proper height. Not only does it solve the problem it actually looks pretty good!
• When we have the pet sitter come while we are on vacation, I take our 4x4 metal exercise pen and stretch it around the bookshelves in my office. That way the dogs have access to that floor space, but they won't pull the books off the shelves and chew them. Apparently book bindings are a great treat when your people go on vacation without you.
• To keep the dogs off the backs of the sofas we got some of that plastic hall runner with the little rubber nubbies on the bottom. We put it on the sofas with the nubby side up and they are no longer so comfy for whippets to sit on! I know a woman with a toy poodle who uses shower curtains to keep the dog of the sofa.

One of the above ‘creative solutions’ involves something I would call an “aversive”. An aversive is something that makes a dog or person not want to do something again because it wasn’t particularly rewarding. I avoid using aversives whenever possible. To the detriment of both human and dog, they are used far too frequently as a method of dog training. They are used far too frequently in society in general. We find it easier to think of ways to punish and force, rather than coach and reward. If I need an aversive, such as the nubby carpet runner, it’s as mild as possible, can’t possibly cause any accidental harm, and the dog will easily and obviously be able to choose an alternative.

Crating your dog(s) when you're not around to supervise them is also a great way to keep them out of all kinds of trouble! This comes with caveats/guidelines however:

1. Make sure the crate is the appropriate size for your dog. At the very least they should be able to stand up and turn around in it. If you have puppies that aren't house trained, the crate can also be too big and sabotage house training. If the puppy pees in one corner and sleeps in the other, it's too big.
2. The crate should be comfortable to lay in for several hours. What kind of surfaces does your dog like to sleep on? Pay attention to make sure they are going to be comfortable. My whippets would be miserable if there wasn't something cozy in there for them to lie on. A dog that sneaks into the shower to sleep on the cold porcelain might like a cooler surface.
3. Don't leave your dog crated for super long periods of time. Dogs are thinking creatures, they get bored, lonely, cramped, and have to pee too. Be polite.
4. If you use an exercise pen instead of a crate make sure it has a top on it that cannot be dislodged. Some of the smallest dogs have escaped exercise pens by jumping or climbing.

Hopefully I’ve given you some brain fodder for helping to control some of your dog’s less desirable tendencies. If not, email me your tricky to control behaviors. I love problem solving! Lets see if we can come up with a solution together!

Courtney, Comet, and Zinger

Here I Am Controlling Their Access

To the Thanksgiving Buffet!