A Tale of Two Kittens and One Puppy » The catch-22 of housetraining

The basic premise behind housetraining dogs is that you want to limit the number of inside accidents that happen. The theory being that the more the dog goes inside, the more he thinks it’s okay to go inside.

The problem comes with just how does your dog tell you it’s time to go out? In order to be able to keep an eye of Chester, we block off the house into smaller partitions. We took about an x-pen and use part of it to block off one hallway, then use a baby gate to block off the entrance to the kitchen.

This allows us to keep him in the office, in the family room, in the kitchen and family room, in the kitchen only, in the kitchen and living room, or in the living room only. But here’s where the catch comes in: he can’t get to the back door from most of those locations.

If he’s in the living room, for instance, and he goes to the baby gate, I’ll often assume that he either needs a drink of water or needs to go out. So I’ll open the gate, and see what he does. Usually he runs right back to the mat that’s under where the cats are fed, and cleans up any remnants he can find (despite the fact that they are only fed twice a day, just like him).

But if he goes to the back door after that, I’ll assume that he needs to go out.

The only problem is that sometimes he just wants to go outside, but he doesn’t have to go to the bathroom. This can be very frustrating if it happens a lot. Most days, if Chester gets his walk in the morninig, this doesn’t happen. Yesterday I was sick, and I just wasn’t up to walking him. But then he went to the back door at 9, at 10, and at 11. But he didn’t need to go to the bathroom until almost noon. I was not real happy with him, considering all I wanted to do was lay on the couch.

I have been considering teaching him to ring a bell when he needs to go out. Most dogs get the hang of this quickly. One option is Poochie Bells (or you can just rig up bells yourself. Another option I’ve come across is the electronic pet doorbell

I only have two concerns, which is why I haven’t done this yet:

He’ll ring the bells when he wants to go out, not just when he “needs” to go out.
The cats (who are larger than Chester) will also love to ring the bells, and I’ll still be getting up more than necessary (how lazy does that sound?).

Now that Chester doesn’t need to go out so frequently, though, I’m leaning more towards trying this. The worst that can happen is it doesn’t work — and then we can just take it down. The best that will happen is that it works, and we don’t have to watch him like a hawk at certain times any more.

Yesterday Chester only needed to go out four times to do his business. I think we ended up actually going out about ten. He’s getting neutered tomorrow, so from what I’ve heard there will be some regression for a few days. But we’re now getting to the point where I can actually get things done — sometimes.

Technorati Tags: housetraining dogs, accidents, baby gate, Poochie Bells