House Training

House training is what I refer to as the worst part of owning a pet. Many of you may have lucked out by adopting a dog that is slightly older or have already been house trained. We, on the other hand, adopted puppies and therefore doomed ourselves to be knee deep in pee and poo for the better half of a year.

The advantages of having a big dog is having a dog with a big bladder. Ender, who was forty pounds at four months, had a bladder the size of Texas. The down side of having a dog with a bladder the size of Texas is that when there's an accident, it's like Niagara Falls.

With Ender, we had absolutely no plan. We picked up a few pee pads, laid them near the doors and just kind of left it at that. The pee pads turned out to be good for only one thing - cleaning up after he's peed in the corner somewhere.

After reading up on this, I believe we were using a combination of the "constant supervision" and "crate training" method to help house train him. We had him on a strict pee schedule and crated him when we weren't supervising him. We absolutely lucked out with Ender as he only had a handful of accidents during training, even when we left him crated all day when we went to work.

Barksdale, on the other hand, literally leaves me dumbfounded. When people say having a puppy is "hard work", THIS is the part they are referring too. She literally had to pee every three hours. And she would pee inside her crate, ALL the time. Hence the dumbfoundedness. And this is everyday for about two months. Although she is better at holding it, we still have to wake up at 6:30am to take her out to potty. And I have lost count of accidents she's had inside the house.

Going through house training, there were times when I lost the will to live because I didn't want to clean up more pee and poo, there were times when I considered giving her back to the shelter, there were times when I considered just letting her sit in her own pee because I didn't want to get out of bed, and there were times that I cursed the heavens above for being responsible for this beast. My advice? Just accept what may come your way because when they gotta go, they just gotta go.

Next up - When your dog is peeing just to be an A-hole.