September 30, 2009

Today we’ll talk about potty training, in my opinion a nicer term than “house breaking”.

But the difference in the two terms provides an excellent opportunity to discuss two prevalent, but different, schools of thought in dog training. Full Disclosure: I am in no way educated or qualified as a dog trainer. Just a regular guy trying to figure it all out on my own. Kind of like raising kids.

For years the “Dominance Theory” has been the prevailing school of thought in dog training. Dominance Theory, in a nutshell, says that dogs, being essentially wolves with better hair, want to behave like a wolf pack. There should be an Alpha, a Beta, etc…. and an Omega at the bottom.

On the surface this makes perfect sense, and in the past I’ve used the concept to come to understandings with my Siberian Husky (R.I.P.). Huskies are arguably the least removed from the wolf pack domestic dog there is – you don’t so much own a husky as the husky allows you to live in the same house most of the time. Not to say they aren’t fantastic dogs. I had mine for nearly fifteen years and we had a very close relationship, more like roommates than the traditional dog/owner dynamic. I still miss him dearly, but they are not Golden Retrievers.

During his younger years I read a couple books and solved a couple of disagreements with him by establishing “dominance” (biting him on the nose seemed to be effective). So I’m not saying that dominance theory won’t work, but I’m starting to think that there may be a better way.

We attended an excellent lecture at the Humane Society this week which was decidedly anti-dominance theory. The guy giving the lecture, I neglected to get his name, made a good point: Dominance theory has never actually been scientifically studied in domestic dogs. It is based on observations of wolves in captivity, and chickens. To say that a wolf in captivity is a dog is a huge leap in logic that is not supported by observation. Talk to anybody who’s every owned or lived with a wolf-hybrid (myself included). Wolves are not dogs. To say that dogs are chickens is just insulting. I’m not even going to go there.

So I’m coming to the conclusion, and it’s being supported by a lot that I’m reading and learning, that there’s a better way. Establishing your dominance through physical force and intimidation can get the dog to do what you want, but it’s an uneasy truce at best.

We’re going to try a more holistic, Bouldery method revolving around rewarding good behaviors and interrupting bad behaviors. So on to the potty training.

We’re potty training, not “house breaking”. We don’t want anything broken, we just want to train our new family member that there is an acceptable place to relieve herself, and more importantly that inside a house is not acceptable.

The first step is to try to create opportunities for success. Rather than wait for an accident and then hit the dog with a newspaper, set up lots of opportunities for the pup to go potty in the right place, and then reward her when she does. She wants your attention, and maybe a treat, so she’ll learn quickly that you are that weird. You do get happy when she poops on the grass, so she’ll poop on the grass. Whatever floats your boat.

The day we brought her home was a long one, as expected. Even though we tried our best to take her outside every hour, and give her several opportunities to go in the “right” place, she’s a baby who’s just had her life disrupted for the third time in very short existence. She doesn’t know what’s going on, and as far as she knows she’ll never see you again.

So she had several accidents on the family room carpet (we kind of want new carpet in there someday anyway, so a bummer to clean up but no great loss). During the night, despite being walked at 10:00, 12:00, 2:00am and 4:00am she had an “accident” in the laundry room.

A note about her bedtime set up: Since she took to the crate right away (see the last post, and the photo above) we’ve placed the crate in the laundry room. The laundry room has the advantage of being small, easy to block off and easy to clean. We do not want to lock her in the crate, as we don’t want to force her to have an accident in the one place we know she feels safe. Dogs are pretty clean by nature, and everything we know from what we’re reading and the dogs we’ve had in the past tells us that she’s not going to soil her bed unless she has to.

So we took the mess in the laundry room, but outside of the crate, as a victory of sorts. The next couple of days followed suit. During the days we made every effort to take her out for lots of walks and lots of “potty times” and started to establish a schedule. Schedule on Day one looked like this:

6:00am – walk in the backyard to go potty.

7:00am – eat breakfast. Moved to 6:30 as she seemed very hungry.

7:00am – take out for potty.

Between 7:00 and noon, lots of outside time and praise every time she “goes” anywhere outside.

Noon – lunch

Noon to 6:00 – lots of outside time and praise every time she “goes” anywhere outside.

6:00 – Dinner

6:00-8:00 – watching her inside, every time she does anything that looks like she’s going to go, pick her up and take her outside.

8:00pm – Long walk to “tire her out” before bedtime.

10:00pm – Short “potty walk”. On the leash, so she knows it’s not playtime, but just in the yard to the area we’ve designated as the potty. While we do this and other potty specific walks, we speak to her in our best baby voices, saying “Go potty Emmy” and praising her like crazy when she does. We have not used treats for this part of training, just happy voices and physical attention as the rewards.

12:00am – same potty walk

2:00am – same potty walk

4:00am – same potty walk

6:00am –same potty walk.

Yes, I’m tired at this point. You can sleep when you’re dead – the good point is that she made it through the second night with no accidents. And the third.

At the third night with no accidents, I removed the 4:00am walk. Ah, the magic of sleeping for four uninterrupted hours. Note that it’s not just me keeping these hours. Our house is a comedy of sleep deprivation induced errors (water from the tap on the frosted flakes, waiting ten minutes for coffee from a machine that’s not turned on, etc…)

There seems to be some disagreement about how long a puppy can go without a potty break. Understandably so since dogs come in so many varieties and sizes. We’ve heard it from reputable sources that the rule of thumb is either: two hours for every month of age, or two hours for every month of age + 1 hour.

In any case during the previous week we’ve been gradually stretching out the intervals. The current night time schedule is:

6:00pm dinner.

6:30-7:00 play in the yard with the other dog.

8:00pm – long bedtime walk.

10:00pm – short potty walk

3:00am – short potty walk

6:30am – long “big dog” walk with both dogs, no special potty walk first.

After only a week sleeping from 10:00 to 3:00 feels like a vacation and we’ve not had a single nighttime accident. In all honesty the daytime accidents since the second day have all been attributable to our inattention, so we are getting there very quickly. I’m not ready to say she’s potty trained, but I took her to the office for four hours on Monday afternoon with no accidents, and she’s made two trips to Petsmart and one trip to Lowes with no accidents. Those trips are great, socializing and potty training and errand running all at once, in environments where the penalty for failure is not all that high. Let’s face it, nobody at Lowes really cares that much if your dog pees on the floor and Petsmart is like a giant indoor dog pee storage area anyway.

At nine weeks the five hours between 10:00 and 3:00 is right at the limit. Last night I had to wake her up at 3:00, she had no interest in going outside, but as soon as her feet hit the grass she had to pee in the worst way. So we’re right where we want to be – one week of poor sleep, I’m looking at one or two more weeks of mediocre sleep, and then I’ll be sleeping as well as any middle aged father of two girls sleeps. Who am I kidding, I’m sleeping that well now.

We’ll talk about Socialization next time.