Dec 14, 2019
Transcript
Kathy: Welcome to Kathy Santo’s Dog Sense. I'm your host Kathy Santo, and I'm here to teach you everything I've learned in my over three decades of training dogs, their families, competing in dog sports, writing about dogs and being a guest on radio and TV shows. And I'm here with one of my trainers staff in Colorado. And wait, did you guys get snow?
Sarah: Oh my God, we got like two feet of snow right now. It's awesome.
Kathy: Oh my gosh, I'm glad you said “Aw”, I was thinking “ful”, she said awesome. I'm like, that's why she should be in Colorado and I should be here in Jersey where it was like 52 today.
Sarah: I know you guys have some nice weather. I got some of the pictures from the teams today. It looked really nice there.
Kathy: Yeah, it's, it's really great. And the dogs are loving it because if it feels like spring and, you know how we have a few dogs who definitely don't like the cold weather, so we're planning some extra indoor activities at daycare for them. Fun, warm activity. What else did we do today? Oh, we did our last day of Thanksgiving photo shoots.
Sarah: Yeah, those have been coming out amazing.
Kathy: Aren’t they great? Wait ‘til see the holiday winter one. Oh my gosh. I'll send you pictures.
Sarah: I can't wait for that.
Kathy: It's a big surprise. All right. So anyway, today we are tasked with talking about potty training.
Sarah: Not only is potty training but realistic expectations for potty training. So of course, like, we go over what the kind of general process is, but real life training your puppy potty training is a little bit different.
Kathy: It is. And I think I really feel like people have unrealistic expectations. My personal feeling is that it takes until the puppy is six months old to be, like, done with it. Now that said, I've had puppies much younger, be perfect. As I a matter of fact, I've never had a puppy take that long. But I'm a trainer, you know, and that's our, it's my jam. Like, I'm watching the, I know what to do. So, but I think a realistic expectation for someone who's not a trainer would be by six months you are done, and there's a lot of things that you could do to make that work easier and there is a lot of things that you could do to make it take much, much longer..
Sarah: Exactly.
Kathy: All right, so let's start back at the breeder. All right. So my breeder, one of my breeders, she has a litter of golden puppies and, I think, they are now seven, eight days old and she's, maybe there are two weeks old...Anyway, I think they're two weeks old, and she's introducing the concept of potty-ing in a certain area right now. So they had wee pads down and they're learning to look for that to go. And then from there there'll be moved to, in a couple of weeks, they’ll be moved to a different surface and then learn to go there. And that's one thing she really values is sending a puppy home from the litter box who already has the idea started.
Sarah: That is incredible. I didn't realize that they were doing it that young.
Kathy: Yeah, it's amazing. And that's where I got Indy from and he, I didn't have to do any housebreaking he gave into my life an 8 week old puppy, he's like, “Hey, I go outside, this is the door?” I'm like, “Oh yeah, sure dude, like, let's go outside.” When I also did was I took the same materials she used to housebreak them and I got a bag of it. So I had an area in my yard and that's where he went. So that’s, you know, your best shot is you're having a breeder who is working on that for you. Now the worst case scenario is you have a dog who's already learned, whether it's a puppy or a shelter dog, rescue dog, learn to go anywhere.
Sarah: Yup.
Kathy: Pet store dogs. It's terrible because they're in a cage, they have to go and that's where they go. And then we want you to housebreak your dog and use crate training, and the dog is like, “Oh cool. The indoor potty”. So that tends to be a challenge too. So those are the best case and the worst case scenario, but we can get it done no matter what's going on. Let me tell you an interesting story before we get into what you would do for it, a more typical dog. So I had a client come to me and the dog was peeing and pooping in the crate, it was complete reverse housebreaking they take it out, they'd monitor it, it wouldn't go. The minute that dog went into crate, and they did all the things correctly. They tried a plastic crate, they tried a wire crate, they tried a smaller crate, like, they did everything right, and this dog, this dog could be against a wall in a crate and go to the bathroom. So we use the hay trick. Now I learned about the hay trick back in the eighties, I didn't invent it. I can't remember who did. We'll give credit when I remember. Do you remember who it was I told you about the other day? No? Anyway, so basically I got some straw, it was around Halloween so it was great. Broke down a hay bale, put it in the crate up to like hip level of this dog and I put him in there. And because the hay was around him, sort of like hugging him like a nest, he stopped going to the bathroom in the crate. And I made it a bigger space so I get more hay in it and the dog didn't go. So it's hard to get people to get on board with that because, obviously, when you take the puppy out, hay is going to come out the front. But I prepped it. I put down like a big trash bag and a sheet and then I put the crate over that, and then after four or five, six days of perfect, no potty-ing in the crate, then I started taking the hay out by the handfuls. Morning I take some out, at night I take some out, until we were just down to a crate with a few pieces of hay in the bottom and it was done. That was it.
Sarah: That's incredible.
Kathy: You can also use it for anxiety, for dogs who freak out in the crate.
Sarah: Yeah.
Kathy: Alright! So now you have a good example and a bad example and what to do in an extreme example. Let's start more with your typical puppy.
Sarah: Yep.
Kathy: So I believe in crate training and I know you do too. So when I'm not home, when I'm sleeping, when I can have my eye on my puppy, it is in a crate.
Sarah: Yep.
Kathy: It's appropriately sized. I am monitoring to make sure that I have met all my puppy's needs. Like he is potty before I put him in, and know how long I can keep them in.
Sarah: Do you want to touch on the size of the crate really quick?
Kathy: Yes. So I would like something that the dog can stand up and turn it around in comfortably, but I don't want them to be able to use one end as the bathroom and the other end as the TV room.
Sarah: Got it.
Kathy: That'd be just one area. And again, I'm counting on the fact that your dog is uncomfortable being next to his waste. Some puppies come from what we call a dirty litter. And the mom wasn't cleaning them because you know, the mom has to clean them for the first two weeks. She licks them to stimulate them to go to the bathroom. They don't have the reflexes to do it on their own. And so some moms weren't great at that and when the puppies actually went, she wasn't cleaning up after them either and they would just got used to laying in it. So if you have a puppy like that, it's a little more challenging. And then I would try the hay trick. Of course, making sure your dog doesn't want to eat the hay.
Sarah: Yeah, exactly.
Kathy: So it's a nice small area. And I also feed my dogs in their crates. So if they're going to have a meal in a crate, it's going to be there and traditionally dogs won’t defecate or urinate where they eat. So you kind of have that on your side as well. So yeah, it's a nice tight space.
Sarah: And then I think a really important thing too is when you are going into potty training your puppy is just think proactively. So think about how much food he’s getting. Think about what time of day he's getting it, how much water and then you want to take the puppy out before they need to go as well. So that's why the schedule is really important. So what do you do for a puppy potty training schedule?
Kathy: So I, you know, my life is the way it is. It's semi erratic.
Sarah: A little busy.
Kathy: A little busy. Yeah. And so I'm going all the time and I really value a puppy who's not locked into a routine, like, not having to eat at this time a day and not at me to potty at this time of day, but yet I will tell my students to give some sort of loose routine to their dogs or their puppies for housebreaking. So I kind of look at the day that's ahead of me and I say, “Alright, well I'm up at five and I'm going to let the puppy to potty right away. I'm going to carry it, I’m not going to walk it, and carry it to the potty area, which we’ll talk about later, and then I'll bring the puppy in, a little playing, a little training with food, probably another visit outside and then back in the crate. Now my rule of thumb is, one hour for every month of age plus one as the amount of time my puppy can spend in a crate. I don't take that through month six so that's silly, right? Your six month old puppy probably shouldn't be in there for seven hours. Could be, but it shouldn't be, and that's during the day. At night your dog goes into nocturnal mode so they can sleep a little bit longer without having to go out. But I'm guaranteeing you with a puppy that is really young, like eight to 12 weeks, you're probably still getting up at least once a night. I put my puppies to bed at like 11 that's their last walk. I don't want to stay up till 11 but I do, cause I don't want to really be up at two and if I get up at 11 I'm probably stretching that to like four, but I'm also not tanking my puppy very frequently. I will take their dinner meal, take a little bit of it and put it into lunch and breakfast because those are times where I'm awake and then I'm putting less in the belly at night. I do cut off food and water for young puppies at five. That's pretty much my only, schedule that I always hold to that 5, 5:30 mark, because I feel that's enough time for the dog to get it out of their system and give him and me a very nice night's sleep.
Sarah: Yeah, exactly. So, stopping the food and water at about five o'clock and then, so, and then you have about the hours in between. And you said by about six months, they should be pretty well potty trained.
Kathy: Yeah, absolutely. One of the things, too, I talked to people about is measure your food. Have you ever asked one of your clients how much they feed their dog and they can't give you an accurate answer. They're like, “You know, like this much.”
Sarah: Yeah, like a handful.
Kathy: They show you their hand! You’re like, “What is that?” They’re like, “Like, a cup.” And then you say the magic question, “What kind of a cup?” They rarely say measuring cup. They're like, “Oh you know, the cup you get, someone gave me.”
Sarah: The scoop.
Kathy: Oh the scoop. The scoop is deadly. Cause that's like, yeah. So you have to measure your food. You have to know what you're putting into that dog so you know what to expect to come out of the dog. And if you're training, hopefully you're using the food. If you have people in your house giving the dog treats or you have company over and it changes how much is going in, you've got to adjust your schedule for all of those possibilities.
Sarah: And another thing for realistic expectations is also to understand that your puppy, like as they're growing and changing, they're going, it's not going to be like a linear path to potty training. They may have some accidents here or there. So what, what would you say is the best way? Like, let's say you just missed it and the puppy peed on the couch or something like that. What would be your steps to kind of helping make sure that that doesn't derail the rest of their potty training?
Kathy: Well, the first thing you do is you pick up the puppy and you walk to the bathroom and you look in the mirror and you say, “Why did I let my puppy dog out? I suck because I didn't listen to anything Kathy and Sarah said.” I would pick the puppy up. I would snap a leash on it, take it outside of the potty area, put it down and say, “Hurry up.” I firmly believe that if a puppy is mid pee and you scoop it up, it will stop peeing, probably not pooping, but peeing. I know that if people were on the potty and somebody lifted them up midstream, they would probably stop. I want to try and have the puppy finish outside. And so I can accomplish that, awesome. Then I put the puppy in the crate and I cleaned it up. And some people say, “Oh, don't let the dog see you clean up their accident ‘cause they'll think that they're in charge.” I'm like, “Hello?”
Sarah: The most important part of cleaning up an accident is making sure that you actually cleaned it all up and got the smell out.
Kathy: It's not about letting the puppy see you. The puppy doesn't think, “Oh, you’re my housekeeper.” Like, that’s just ridiculous.
Sarah: Well again, that's adding human emotions to training another species. Like, this is a dog, this is not a child.
Kathy: We should do a podcast on weird things that people have told you. Like I heard somebody said, “Oh, you know how you teach your dog that you're in charge, you spit in their food before you give it to them again.” What?!
Sarah: Again, that's like a weird human thing. No.
Kathy: Yeah, no. There's others we can’t talk about them now. I’m thinking of all of them now. Okay, anyway...So yeah, and you clean it up completely. Now this doesn't mean with water. Please don’t use ammonia, because a component in urine is ammonia. So all your Pine Saul, pine scented ammonia things are just going to draw the dog back. I would use something that gets rid of the odor and breaks it down completely. And we use Fizzion. And I always tell people, “If the dog school uses a product, you better get on it.”
Sarah: Yeah, we use it for a reason.
Kathy: Yeah! We see all these dogs, we know what works. Fizzion works. There's others that really don't work. We don't want to say a name, but they're not really the miracles that they say they are.
Sarah: That they claim to be.
Kathy: There you go.
Sarah: No, tried and true. We use Fizzion.
Kathy: And then some of them are like, “Oh my dog keeps going back to this rug to pee on.” Okay, supervise better and keep him away from the rug, or get rid of the rug.
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. The biggest thing is don't let them go back to there and potty again.
Kathy: Right, right. And again, it comes down to supervision. Like, I think the biggest thing to tell people is, “You've got to supervise your puppy.” Supervise it like it's a nine month old baby walking around pulling crap down off the counter on their head with the chords, and sticking their fingers in sockets. Like, you understand that. That you have to supervise that. And yet people after like a day or two of no accents they're like, “Oh, my puppy is trained.” And the hardest puppies to train are the small grade ones, because the big breeds in real time, like, your shepherd takes a crap behind the couch. Like, you know it. You walk around, you’re like, “What is that?” Your Pomeranian does it, you don't find it in real time. You find it like when you go to put up the tree, six months later, you pull the couch out, you're like, “Oh my God, what's that?” And see that's why the dog isn't housebroken because he's pottied in so many places that you don't even know it. And that's rewarding, because relief is really rewarding. And you can't come back and show them the fossilized poop and fuss at them. As a matter of fact, you can never fuss at them for accidents cause it's all your fault.
Sarah: Exactly.
Kathy: I had a student, and I know I've told you this story, who I went to her house and she had a 10 week old puppy and I walked in and the housekeeper was there and I had to wait for the owner to come. And while I'm there, the housekeeper’s bragging that the 10 week old puppies perfectly housebroken and I totally don't believe it. And then the owner comes. I'm like, “So tell me about the housebreaking.” She's like, “Oh, we don't need to worry about it. He's perfectly housebroken. He just doesn't come when I call him.” I'm like, “Oh, really?”
Sarah: 10 weeks old?
Kathy: 10 weeks old. It was a little multi-poo.
Sarah: Yeah.
Kathy: So the housekeeper opens the gate to leave the kitchen. And what the owner said was, “The only thing he doesn't do is he doesn't come when he's called. And if he runs out of this room, he'll never come back.” I'm like, “Okay.” So, of course, the housekeeper opens the gate to leave. And what happens? Dog runs out and they're like, “Oh, my God! He’s loose!” And they're running through this, you know like 32 room house and I'm just by the front door and thinking, “This is going awesomely.” So while I'm there, I turned to the right and I see the dining room, which is right off the kitchen and what I'm struck by is the fact that the dining room has snow white carpet. And I look a little harder and I'm like, ‘Wait a minute.” And I squat down and I see like 500 silver dollar size pee stains. The dog had been peeing in the dining room, and I'm sure he pushed out that gate, got out, and got back in without anybody knowing. And I'm like, “I am going to have to tell this woman and she's...her head is going to blow off her body.” I'm like,
Sarah: How’d the housekeeper not find it though?
Kathy: Apparently she wasn't doing her job either! It was the formal dining room. So they come back down, they had them, they're like, “Oh my gosh! He didn't do anything.” And I'm like, “You know what? I kind of have bad news about the house. Frankly, he’s peeing in your dining room.” And she was really, like, “He key is not!” And I'm like, “No, he is.” And she's like, “Oh, I don't believe it.” I'm like, “Well..” I had to help her to the ground to crawl into the dining room. Now we're both on our hands and knees and she's so mad. She smacking the ground, “I can't believe it.” Yeah, the housekeeper magically disappeared. And so then we had to talk about better gates and better management and yeah, it was...but then it took twice as long, right? Because the dog said, “Why can't I get to my indoor potty area?” Everything had to change. Supervision had to go through the roof.
Sarah: Yeah! Inadvertently you had house-trained your puppy, just on your white rug in the formal dining room.
Kathy: Had she had a Great Dane puppy. He would've had one accident and they would have seen it. There's a river coming from the dining room. Because he weighed three pounds, he got away with it. Oh my gosh. It was awful. It was terrible.
Sarah: Yeah. Supervision is, and management is a huge piece of the potty training.
Kathy: It is. It is. And, and realistic expectations. Like you should know and if you don't, now you do, that a 10 week old puppy is probably not really housebroken.
Sarah: Nope.
Kathy: Something is amiss.
Sarah: Any other, like from working with clients with potty training and like that, that time period before six months, like any other things that have happened that where you fixed it or where it was like as like a kind of specific issue?
Kathy: Yeah, I, when I have people who we lovingly call “noncompliance,” and they're non-compliant for a lot of reasons, their life is crazy. I mean they shouldn't go, the dog may didn't want a dog. Maybe they've decided the kids are going to be in charge and it goes badly. So if they're non-compliant or non able to be compliant, we find that we give them these guidelines. If your eyeballs can't be on the puppy, they're crated. If you can 100% supervise, they're gated in a small room with a leash on and if you can supervise pretty much but not 100% they can be X-penned or tethered in a room with you. In addition, if you want really high level security you can tether them. I told a student today at the home. So it was a perfect example at the lesson I was at today. The puppy moved away from us and peed and it was right about the time he should have, and he had just drank water. But if he had been tethered to her body she would have felt him pulling away like a fish on a line trying to get away.
Sarah: Yeah. That's a really, that brings up a good one. So what are some of your like tried and true cues that a puppy will give you that they have to potty? Cause a lot of times new owners, they don't know what to look for. They don't know that if the puppy tries to, like, leave you and create distance from you, they probably need to go to the bathroom. So what are some other kind of physical cues that a puppy will give you that they have to go potty?
Kathy: They're sniffing and circling is the big one. Definitely becoming disinterested in your play or training or snack or belly rub session. You feel like you're playing and you’re playing and dog's into it and then suddenly they walk away. Like, “What do I smell?” And then they go, right?
Sarah: Yep, yep.
Kathy: If they're really engaged in something and suddenly disconnect that, that's your cue. And they all have different ways of telling you. Right? So, my Border Collie, both of them actually, would run to me, run to the door, run to me, run to the door. And I'm like, “I guess you have to go.” My golden barks, you've heard, “Oh, gotta go.” My doberman would just stare at me. Like, I'd be on the computer and I feel this. I'd be like, “What is going on?”
Sarah: Yeah. They’re tethered to you, you'll learn it that much more quickly because like you'll, you'll be a pattern. You'll notice after maybe one or two times you'll see one of those indicators and take them out and then you'll know their cue. If they weren't tethered to you and they were just loose in the house, you missed it.
Kathy: Exactly. And you know, it's interesting when they hit a certain age, they don't give you cues anymore because they're housebroken, and you're taking them out a sufficient amount of time. I can't remember the last time one of my dogs asked me to go out because I think I just take them out.
Sarah: Yeah. You get into a routine with your dogs and once they get older, they know when they're going to be able to go.
Kathy: Yeah. And you just manage what goes in, what comes out.
Sarah: Yeah.
Kathy: I think we should talk about the DPA: Designated Potty Area, and this is a huge thing and this is, we did a Facebook live on it, on chicken rock.
Sarah: We have the video for chicken rock.
Kathy: Chicken rock is...it was very popular. So, basically I want my dogs to be able to go out the back sliding door, obviously if you're an apartment, this is not valid, and run to the back of the property and pee and poop in the area that I want them to so they're not on the grass. And the way I accomplices is I put out an X pen and I leave it unattached, so there's an opening in it. That X pen, I choose to put wood stove pellets because I want the difference in the texture between grass, mulch, and where I want them to go. Although, side-note, I teach my dogs once the potty training is going well, I make the multi-surface pottiers. They go on pavement, they go on grass, they go on stone, they go everywhere because I don't want them to say, “Wait, where's my wood pellets?” What do wood pellets do for you? They're stove pellets. They’re made out of wood. You could use anything you want. If I went somewhere with a potty that was different than my yard, like a friend's house, I could take a baggie of those, maybe even a baggie of used ones and then dump them in a place in her yard. So anyway, in addition to the wood stove pellets, I put a bowl in the back of the crate, so in the pen. So you would have to walk all the way into it and continue going to that to the side of it and that bowl is upside down ,and on that bowl I put a piece of chicken, you can use anything you want that the dog never gets. Hence the name chicken rock and when I was doing it with values to rock. So it looks like this. I know that puppy has to potty. I get up in the morning, I go into the refrigerator, get a piece of chicken, put it on that rock. Yes, I have to make two trips, go back in the house, get the puppy out of the crate, clip on a leash, walk outside all the way to the potty area. I put the puppy down in the potty area. They go to the back, they eat the chicken and they say, “While I'm here, might as well go.”
Sarah: Big key to that is you carry that is, in the beginning you carry the puppy out to the rock so that they're not able to go on the way out. That's a big part of it.
Kathy: Huge. Huge. Because they’re puppies, their bladder is the size of a moment, so they're going to go at some point on the way to that. Then as they get older and the months go by, and I hopefully can still carry them for a little bit, I put them down farther and farther away, and I'm adding from day one, “Hurry up,” and down they get the chicken and then I say, “Hurry up, hurry up,” and then what happens next depends on the puppy. A lot of owners make the mistake of bringing the dog right back in the house. Now it's important to note that when I'm holding that, when I'm in that X pen, I'm holding the leash. My puppy is not loose, because the first nine months that I have a puppy, they are potty-ing on a leash. People that are lazy, and let the dog out, and then when they have to take the puppy somewhere and they can't let them loose and they're on the lease, the puppy looks at them like, “Can you give me some privacy and space?” Because you taught them to go 50 feet away from you. Now, people who live in the city don't have that issue, but it's a suburban. Once my puppy has gone, I can either take them in the house or I can put on a long leash and then we can play in the yard because I'm so boring in that X pen. I don't give them any fun. And a lot of times people make the mistake of taking the dogs on a walk and then when the dog goes, take them inside. And what the dog knows is that, “If I poop or pee, I'm going back in the house and I love being outside so I'm going to hold it.” But some puppies are outside they’re like, “I gotta go in the house,” and then those are the puppies that you do take in right away. But the puppies are more outward bound, adventurous, energetic, pop on a light line and let them run in the yard for awhile. Give them that as a reward.
Sarah: Yup.
Kathy: Speaking of the reward, I do reward at night for emptying themselves, Like, they get chicken from being there, but I will start adding the food reward. Not every time, but when they are squatting and pooping, I will give them food in that moment. I don't give it to them when they run out of the pen because they’re, like, “Oh I should run out of the pen to get them food.” And we have great housebreaking sheets. I think we have a couple. We have one with the challenging housebreaking.
Sarah: Yeah, we have those. So those are all in the lesson sheet library for you guys. If you need them, just drop a comment when we post this. We can direct you right to them.
Kathy: Let's talk about the puppy who suddenly is peeing all the time. I'm thinking about the girl puppies.
Sarah: Yeah.
Kathy: Normally it's a UTI and they just show up. They don't catch them. They just get them. No. And so then what your vet wants is a urine sample. So let's talk about how to get a urine sample. YAY! You get a short, not high sided, Rubbermaid... I want to say Rubbermaid, it's like saying Jello. You don't say “gelatin,” you say Jello, right? A container, a plastic container. Boiling water goes in, up and out or dry all day. Then I go outside and I hide it. Not going to be flashing it in front of my dog's face and think it's food or get interested in it. So it's behind my back. As soon as the dog squads, I sled that sucker in, get a sample and then take it out. Go in the house, pour it in my sterilized pill bottle or vitamin jar as my sample. Masking tape. Pre-do this right? Put masking tape around the bottle with your last name on it and the dog's first name, then you don’t have to do it when you are full. Now my daughter, who's pre-vet, and has worked at a vet for years, confirms what I always knew when they want a urine sample, they don't want a cup of urine. Okay? When they ask for a stool sample, they don't want a bag, a poop. They just need a little, little bit. So don't go crazy with that. And then you either refrigerate it until you get it to the vet that day or you take it right over to the vet. And I would call ahead and say, “Hey, I'm bringing a urine sample. Can you test it?” Some vets will test it and then give you Clavamox, or whatever they're going to give you for that, or some bets that, you know, “Bring the dog in. I need to see.“ So it just depends on the relationship and the type of vet that you have. But that's how you get a urine sample with very little dramatics. I mean, and people are like, “Should I use gloves?” Yeah. You know what? Knock yourself out, wear gloves. I don't, but you can. Yeah.
Sarah: Yeah. Then the indications for that, so usually it is the female dog, like you said. If they're peeing, like, excessively. You know, like, way more than what's normal, then that would be when you could take them to the vet to get that checked out.
Kathy: Although sometimes there are other factors. Aww! Hey, Jack and Nev!
Sarah: That was Jake.
Kathy: There are other factor-that was Jakey?
Sarah: Yeah. He was just saying, “Hello.”
Kathy: Hey, Jakey! One of Sarah's dogs. So I had a student and it was, like, July and she's like, “My puppy is not a puppy, she's 10 months old. She was housebroken and now she's peeing throughout the house”. And of course the first thing you think is a UTI.
Sarah: Right.
Kathy: And like, all right, it sounds like UTI. However, let me ask you, are there any new sources of water that she's getting into? Is she drinking out of the toilet? Like is there a water cooler that's liking? She's like, “No, no, there's nothing. There's nothing”. I'm like, “Are you sure?” She's like, “Yeah, no.” She said, “I, you know, we opened our pool last week.” I was like, “ Wonderful! Hello! Big dog water bowl right out in your yard.” And she's like, “Oh, you're right.” The dog is drinking from the pool when she’s swimming!” I'm like, “Yeah, I know I’m right”
Sarah: Jesus.
Kathy: Yup. And some people have decorative fountains. Like that's what I mean by other sources of water outside the box.
Sarah: Yeah. I always ask too, like, you know, “Is the husband or the kids sneaking the dog water when you're not looking?” Something like that. Or, “Are they giving the dog water when you don't know about it? So you don't know that they need to go again?” Looking for those saboteurs.
Kathy: I had a student, Oh my gosh, she had this refrigerator brand new and it was gigantic ones and it was leaking and so she called the repair people and they came out and they said it was leaking. And, like, three or four times! And she finally called the company, got the head of the company’s phone number wrote this nasty email, like, RIP customer service. She wanted the company to take it back. She was going ham on them and she was so mad, and this is actually why she wound up calling me. She said one morning she went downstairs, it was off, her schedule was early, and she's in a robe and she hears (whirring noise)
Sarah: Oh, God.
Kathy: And she’s like, “Now I'm going to see what's wrong with this thing?” Oh no. It was her lab, who learn to jump up and push the button, and drink from the stinking refrigerator.
Sarah: Oh, my God
Kathy: She said, “Should I call and apologize to the people I ripped?” I’m like, “You just do what you need to do.”
Sarah: Send a holiday gift basket.
Kathy: God, yeah. And that's what we had to work on and you know, we did unplugged the water. Unrewarded behavior extinguishes itself.
Sarah: Yep.
Kathy: We plugged it back in, and start on the ice cubes.
Sarah: The refrigerator's going batty.
Kathy: Yeah, that's great. When again, dogs are invested they discover themselves and people get all twisted that the dog isn't learning Down or Place. I'm like, “If you did it the right way, they'd learn it really fast because they are problem solvers and they are brilliant.”
Sarah: Yep. All right.
Kathy: Let's see. We covered crate. Oh, I know puppies who pee in their crate! Sometimes, you know this, clients want to leave a blanket or a towel in there and the puppy just bunches it up and pees on it and pushes it back. So I like them, if you have that issue, I like them to have a naked crate. That way. If they pee in it, there's a consequence in a lot of times I had to do that and they also will pee on stuff. Toys, don’t do that.
Sarah: Yeah, anything that can absorb the urine, they'll use it.
Kathy: I had a student whose dog, see, this is like story time with Kathy and Sarah, but we never, we never say names. So we like the idea that you cover a crate because we feel like it takes the visual interest away from the dog or the puppy, and they settle down better. And I had a student who has, she's struggling with housebreaking. As soon as we took the towels out, the dog was perfect. Until one night, it pulled the blanket through the crate bars that was covering the crate and then peed on them. So like, yup.
Sarah: Yeah. We always try to get the caveat like make sure that the sheet or the blanket is thick enough that they can't pull it into the crate.
Kathy: And my doberman, when they used to pull it in, it didn't matter. It could be like a mattress and they’d pull that sucker in. The thing was, I put boxes on top of his crate, and then I put the sheet on it and I pulled it out like a tent, and I secured it. Ask Eric, he remembers this. I had books and an end table, and he's like, “Catherine, what is happening?” I'm like, “NO!”
Sarah: He can't pull the sheet in!
Kathy: Oh man, poor Eric. That should be our hashtag, “poor Eric”. Yup.
Sarah: Well it worked didn’t it? He wasn't able to pull the sheet in.
Kathy: Damn right it worked. It was great. I felt victorious. I may have even snuck out at two in the morning to see if it worked. I'm not going to lose another blanket. So let's see. Got diet, got the time of the night out, we have the schedule, you have the signals, crate size, potty area outside has to be on leash, when you go somewhere new, you can take, if they’re using that method of having a different surface, you can take it with you, and at some point, you want to teach the dog to be variable. Become a variable surface peer.
Sarah: Yeah, it's not linear, right? It's going to be a roller coaster when potty training your puppy. He has an accident, deal with it. Like you said, go in the bathroom, ask yourself what you did wrong and then go back out there and just next day start over
Kathy: And realistically say, “At six months it'll be perfect if I do everything right. And so I'm not going to delude myself into thinking of typical puppy with an acorn bladder is able to hold that at all.”
Sarah: Yeah, exactly.
Kathy: Oh! Can we talk about one thing. When you say, “I told my wife when I was going out to watch the puppy,” “I told my husband to watch the puppy,” “I told my kids to watch the puppy,” nobody's going to watch the puppy like you are going to watch the puppy. So if you can't trust the people that you need, you’re better off crating the dog so you don't set yourself back. Cause that's the worst part. And holidays, cause we're recording this the day before Thanksgiving, holidays are the worst because you get distracted and you get busy and you have company over and somebody's like, “Oh my God, there's poo in the living room!”
Sarah: Or someone steps on it on your carpet.
Kathy: And they don’t know it and then they track it.
Sarah: Or barefoot! In the middle of the night, you get up on Christmas morning and you step in dog poop on your barefoot. That's happened to me way too many times.
Kathy: Yes. Yes. So that's why you should have people over for the holidays. No, just kidding.
Sarah: Puppy goes in the crate.
Kathy: We have really good examples of managing and monitoring your dog on the holidays and that would be in the Thanksgiving podcast as well.
Sarah: Yeah. Alright, so we think that we've covered pretty much everything. Any other questions let us know and we'll be happy to answer them.
Kathy: Yeah, we'll put our answers to your questions in the comments. Is there a comments? There should be. If not, we’ll just record another one
Sarah: Yeah. I'll post the link of this in all the groups and then they can comment underneath any questions they have.
Kathy: All right, awesome. Great. Thanks for hanging out with me.
Sarah: Absolutely.
Kathy: Always fun. All right, I'll talk to you later. Bye, guys!
Sarah: Happy potty training everyone.
Kathy: As always, if you like what you hear, jump over to whatever subscription service you downloaded from and like, rate, subscribe, tell a friend, and share this episode somewhere to help spread the word so we can continue to create an awesome community of dog lovers and learners. Happy training everyone!