Godiva Gets Potty Trained (By Jove, I Think She’s Got It)

The alleged point of this blog is to document our dogs’ events for future amusement or to use as a learning tool. Say the event is that our puppy is now potty trained. Now say that we got a puppy somewhere down the line (not in the near future, thank you). We could then go back to our blog and find exactly how we accomplished potty training with our previous puppies.

Guess what? You’ll never guess. Not in a million years. Give up? Godiva is potty trained. Unless we ignore her for hours on end, she does all her potties outside now. When she needs to go she either tries to get our attention and/or runs to the back door.

How did we do it?

Well…

/Crickets chirping

Uh, umm, ah…

/Scratches head

I guess it was, nope, wasn’t that…

/Stares blankly into space

I’m not really sure how it happened. It sure was not a planned coherent strategy brilliantly executed. It was likely more a bunch of random crap thrown together that somehow maybe worked. Kind of like Laugh In. So, what is this magical random crap?

• Reward the heck out of her: Whenever she did a potty outside, we immediately rewarded her upon going back inside. It sounds like in and of itself, this would work. It might. Except that we made it confusing. Being softies, we also rewarded her if Couper went outside to go potty and she went along. This sounds like the following, “Good boy Couper for going potty outside. Here’s your yummie. Well, you helped Godiva, you get a yummie too”. Strangely, this somehow led Godiva to believe that she deserved a yummie any time that she went outside. Stranger still, she wants to go outside a lot.
• “Encourage” her when she went potty inside. By encourage I mean, yell, point, say “bad girl”, stick her nose near the mess.
• Take her outside constantly and wait out there until she went potty so that the chances are better that she will go while out there rather than inside.
• Put down a pee pad in the kitchen and hope out of pure random luck she goes on it and likes it. This never really worked. She did hit it once or twice. Sometimes she came close. Usually she just chewed up the pad.

This, strangely, is the same way that Couper got potty trained. Amazingly, like Couper, Godiva demands to be watched while going so that she can be rewarded. Don’t normal people just send their dogs out and assume they went? Normal people are strange.

Godiva One Year Later

As usual, this is late, but on the first of May, Godiva has been with us for a whole year. So what do we know a year later?

• We have documented many times on this blog that Godiva is a serial laundry stealer and finger/toe biter. This has not changed one bit. I think she steals laundry because she knows we will chase her, and she loves being chased. She bites fingers/toes for two reasons (other than they are yummy). One, to get attention. Two, when she has to go potty. Which leads to...
• We are going to be like the networks on election night and declare her potty trained. All the votes aren't in, but the data is definitely leaning towards it. This deserves and will get its own post.
• Couper is getting better with her, but still gets territorial with his mommy and me or his toys. Godiva can be very lovey towards Couper one minute, and then relentlessly chew on him the next. Her new favorite thing to do while Couper and I are cuddling on the sofa watching TV is to creep around the other sofa, poke her head out, and roar like a little Harley at Couper. On cue, he leaps from my lap (which hurts like hell, thank you very much) and chases her around the living room. This is often much more entertaining than what is on TV.
• She still sleeps in her crate in the bedroom, but desperately wants to be like Couper and sleep in the bed. This is also a separate post.

Despite only being with us a year, it is hard to remember her not being with us. Sometimes I will talk about something that happened, say, two years ago and I will say something like, "and we brought the puppies, I mean puppy, we only had Couper then."

So, congratulations on making it a year Godiva. If you are good, we might make it two.

Happy Mommy's Day!!!

Happy Mommy's Day from the Poop! Couper and Godiva want to say thank you to their mommy for all the things she does and all the stuff she puts up with. Sometimes just barely puts up with. She is the nicest dachshund mommy in the whole wide world. They promise, if just for this day, to be good puppies and be super nice to their mommy. As for tomorrow, all bets are off.