Back to the Breeder with Ruby?
Enough is just about enough. I'm about to give up on this poor little puppy.
But honestly. I've had a lot of puppies in my years between age 22 and age 69, and I've NEVER had one that I couldn't house-train within a couple of weeks. Ruby seems to be stone resistant.
I know she can last for six or seven hours, because she sleeps through the night in her crate without problems.
She also has a nice X-pen (two of them, really) and she can manage three or four hours during the day in that, while I'm out running around.
She seems to know she's supposed to go outside. As soon as she's taken outdoors, she does her thing and is enthusiastically congratulated. She never poops in the house, but she pees constantly. When she pees in the house -- which can be up to half a dozen times a day -- she does it by stealth. It's VERY rare for me to catch her in the act. But trust me: many acts take place.
I doubt if she has a UTI: her urine is clear and odorless, she has no fever, she has a good appetite, and she's lively and alert and seems to feel just fine.
I am very, very tired of cleaning up puddles.
But more serious is the issue of keeping her out of places where she's either going to get hurt (i.e., drown) or to do serious damage I can't afford.
As you may recall, after she fell in the pool, I barricaded the pool with these wooden garden fence strips that I bound together with zip ties and roped to the patio uprights. This works to keep her out of the pool, but it means I have to climb over the thing every time I walk around the backyard.
Ditto the bedroom closet.
I keep my shoes on shelves, a habit developed years ago when I learned that shelving the shoes discouraged the German shepherd puppy from eating them. I have foot issues that obviate purchasing cheap shoes; thus my shoes represent a considerable investment and are not things I can casually toss in the trash. This dog will climb up the shelves to get at the shoes.
So I put a piece of this wooden garden fence stuff across the closet doorway, taped in place with blue masking tape. The problem with keeping the door shut is that the laundry basket resides in there and there's no ventilation in the closet, so if the closet door is shut, forthwith in 100-degree heat (which we happen to be enjoying today) all the clean clothing in the closet starts to stink like week-old laundry. I need to keep the door open to ventilate the closet.
A week or two ago I tripped and fell over the pool barricade. Cut my leg but otherwise was OK.
Today after putting pup in her crate and getting ready to climb into bed for a short siesta to make up for yet another three-hour night, I went into the closet to hang up some clothes and tripped coming out.
Thought I'd fractured an ankle. Dragged myself over to the nightstand to pull down the walk-around phone and call 911, but lo! the phone was gone.
Dragged myself into the hall to scoot into the living room in search of another phone I might be able to reach without standing up and...oh yes! Dragged myself RIGHT INTO YET ANOTHER PUDDLE OF PEE!!!!!
I swear, this dog has not been out of sight long enough to pee! I'll be darned if I can figure out how on earth she pulls off these stealth pee attacks. She's over 3 months old now, and she should be old enough to get the message. I think. I mean come ON. I've had nine-week-old pups learn house-training. The most difficulty I've had before was with the last German shepherd, and I'm quite sure she was trained by 12 or 14 weeks.
One person on this board has reported that it took six months to house-train her corgi. In the patience department, I'm not sure I'm up for cleaning up a half-dozen puddles of pee every day for the next three or four months. But more to the point, I do have osteoporosis, and if I keep falling over contraptions set up to keep her out of places where she could get hurt or do unaffordable damage, sooner or later I'm going to break a hip. Really, that is not a very appealing prospect.
Pretty soon it will be warm enough to get her into the pool and (I hope) train her to swim to the steps and get out. (This is dubious: Cassie panics so violently in the pool that she cannot be trained to find her way out; after the pup nearly drowned, I'll be pretty surprised if she'll be any less terrified by the water than Cassie is.) And I suppose the bedroom door could be kept shut, instead of trying to barricade the closet -- a nuisance, yes; but not a suicidal nuisance.
The vet, when called, suggested a trainer. I've called this person and left word on her machine. But I feel like an idiot, calling a trainer to do a job I've done many times before myself, with no problem. And I feel mighty dubious about sinking more money into this puppy. I've already spent myself stupid, and now I have to spend god only knows how many hundreds of dollars to house-train her????? This makes sense...how?
Is there some special secret to house-training a corgi that doesn't apply to other breeds? If there is, would someone please share it? If she can't be trained within the next three weeks or so, she's going to have to go back to the breeder.
Replies to This Discussion
-
Permalink Reply by Rachelle N on
-
I'd opt for a session or two with a good trainer. Every dog is different. The dogs that you had in the past are not the same as the one you have now. Think about humans and how humans learn at different speeds and in different ways.
If you've ruled out a physical problem, it's probably that she needs more time.
-
Permalink Reply by Marina Holshevnikoff on
-
Hi Vicky,
I feel your pain! I've been SO frustrated with the potty training process and people telling me it SHOULD be taken care of by now. The best bit of info I heard on my post here not so long ago was that bladder control really kicked in around 4 months. I don't know if that's true or not but I feel like I started noticing a difference with Jerry's ability to hold his pee between 4 and 5 months. We still have accidents (obvious fault of my own, I totally know. Yesterday *I* went to the bathroom while he was waking up from a nap and came back to a huge puddle. Shame on me for needing to use the restroom :P) but they are less frequent.
The other stuff is all finesse and what works for you, I think. We keep Jerry in his pen when we're around the house and only let him out when we can play with him or follow him around. Otherwise he gets into too much trouble! All of his accidents happen in his pen that way. Just hang in there! You got the night time down, your half way there!!
-
Permalink Reply by Vicky Hay on
-
Mm hmmm. So many folks on this site are reporting their pups' house-training doesn't really "take" until the little critter is 4 to 7 months old, I'm wondering if that's characteristic of the breed.
This morning...hang onto your hats, everyone: she ACTUALLY WENT TO THE DOOR AND SCRATCHED THE SCREEN TO GO OUT!!!!! Once out, business was transacted.
It must be a matter of what so many commenters here are saying: watch the puppy very, very, VERY carefully. All the time.
-
Permalink Reply by Becky Focht on
-
Vicky - so so happy for you and Ruby! I would say Foxy was about 4 months old before she finally "got it" but we still got up in the middle of the night for quite some time. Good luck to you!!!
-
Permalink Reply by Jane on
-
I would say both of my dogs were pretty reliably trained by 16 weeks, but they did not "ask" to go out until much later - we simply took them out on a schedule to avoid accidents and kept them within sight. Potty training at that age is more about preventing accidents IMO.
-
Permalink Reply by Jennifer Markley on
-
My Seanna's urine has a high pH which causes her to form crystals in her urine, and sets her up for UTI's. She too was like your puppy. You need to take this dog to the vet and have her tested. She is not doing this in spite...dogs do NOT like to soil their den. The fact that she won't pee in the crate tells you that.
Even after having Seanna on special food and being very careful with cleaning, etc...the only way I can tell she might have a UTI is her starting to have frequent accidents.
-
Permalink Reply by Jane T. (& Griffin) on
-
You've got so much going on in your life right now. You have to take care of yourself first. By doing the best thing for you you'll be doing the best for Ruby.
-
Permalink Reply by Linda on
-
I am so glad that things are falling into place! Haven't had to house train a puppy in many many years. Last critter I had to housebreak was my daughter and she was actually easy.
- ‹ Previous
- 1
- 2
- 3
- Next ›
Rescue Store
Stay Connected
FDA Recall
Canadian Food Inspection Agency Recall
Groups
We support...
Badge
© 2024 Created by Sam Tsang.
Powered by
