Regressed Puppy

Sorry I haven’t written in awhile, I’ll make up for it with a thorough posting :) It’s been a tad crazy in the Forest household lately; Nick and I have had hectic work schedules, illness and end of summer weddings and festivities. Then on top of all that, we’ve been very preoccupied with a certain puppy problem.

For the first two months of his life, Forest was allowed to go potty anywhere he wanted. His doggy-mom tried to teach him not to go where he slept, but anywhere else was fine. Then Forest came home with us. We spent the next two months trying to teach the puppy that pooping in our bedroom was not OK and he should do all of his business outside.

We researched two methods of potty-training: negative reinforcement and positive reinforcement. I think negative reinforcement used to be the popular approach a few years back (find a puddle of dog pee? just rub the dog’s nose it in while yelling, that’ll teach him). But now the general consensus is that negative reinforcement can be just that, negative. So positive reinforcement is the preferred method (find a puddle of dog pee? don’t yell at the dog, just praise him the next time he goes outside). Even if you catch the dog in the act, positive reinforcement emphasizes not yelling at the dog, give him a stern No or your “negative” marker word and take him outside to finish up…don’t forget to praise!

We found that a mixture of positive and negative reinforcement works best for us. If we catch Forest peeing in the house, there’s going to be a hell of a lot of yelling, but then we take him outside and tell him what a good dog he is. The yelling part sounds mean, but Forest just wasn’t catching on to potty training until we started yelling when we caught him. We aren’t even that picky, if the dog wants to go potty on the driveway, have at it, as long as it isn’t inside. And no, if we find a random puddle in the house, we don’t rub his nose in it. If we’re not watching Forest and he takes that opportunity to pee, well then that’s our fault for not keeping an eye on him. He is a puppy after all.

So after two months of potty training, I think Forest was finally starting to get it, he was only having one or two accidents a week in the house. Then Nick and I spent a few days in San Diego visiting some friends. We feel bad asking anyone to puppy-sit Forest until he’s fully potty trained, so we decided to board him at the vet. We dropped Forest off Friday morning and picked him up Tuesday evening. San Diego was fabulous, but I missed the puppy. That was the longest I’d ever been away from him so I was pretty excited to get Forest home.

The excitement was short-lived. Forest was only home for like an hour before he peed inside. Luckily, I caught him in the act and got a “No no no no bad bad dog!” out before Forest stopped midstream and cowered with his tail between his legs (now I understand why nature engineered puppies to be so adorable. I was surrounded by dog pee but felt absolutely horrible about yelling at him for it).

After 5 days at the boarders, Forest had regressed back to I’ll-go-potty-anywhere-I-want-to puppy. We couldn’t blame the boarders, they’re not responsible for potty-training all the dogs they watch. But I can’t believe how quickly Forest slipped back to bad habits. He peed inside again a few hours after I caught him that first time. The next night, I look over and he’s taking a big dump in the middle of the kitchen. And a day later we were playing in the bedroom and found little wet spots streaked across the carpet, which we determined were caused by Forest running and pissing at the same time.

Friday and Saturday passed without accidents so we started feeling a little more confident, like maybe Forest was remembering that peeing in the house = bad puppy. But Sunday night did not go well. No, it did not go well at all. Forest was hanging out with Nick in our basement. We have two huge bean bags made of pleather-like material in the basement. I love them, they’re super comfy and can fit 2-3 people on them. Forest also loves them and will often drag his toys on top of them to play.

Nick said that at one point, the puppy was standing on a bean bag and watching TV (which just sounds so cute) when he suddenly jumped off and came over to sit on Nick’s foot. Nick said the puppy felt a little wet and looked guilty. Sure enough, Forest had piddled all over one of the bean bags. Nick said he had never given much thought to the design of a bean bag before, but unfortunately the crevices and dips in the bean bag makes this sort of accident look like lakes and streams of puppy piss (which I never got to see, the sweet boy had cleaned it all up before he told me about it).

After almost two weeks of cleaning up mess after mess, we got Forest sort of retrained. Then we had to board the puppy again to attend the wedding of Nick’s brother. Sure enough, Forest was piddling all over the place when we got him home.

So we’ve gone back to checking on the puppy every few minutes, fun times! Experts say dogs have no concept of “revenge,” but I’ll say, it certainly looks like Forest is punishing us for boarding him (that’ll teach us).

Regressed Puppy