Saturday, May 22, 2004
Wow, Mojo must have poo'd a record, both in times and amount. He also ate around 1.5 cups of Eukanuba, now that his food is 'pure.' The puppy is a machine...a pooing machine. It's like he's dumped more than a pound of poo, and was going every 3 hours or so. Maybe he was getting the rest of the Blue out of his digestive tract. Maybe he just got that loving feeling. But this pace is unsustainable.
The two-pad system seems to work pretty well. We have two pads upstairs, two pads downstairs. That way he can pee on a pad then poo on another. We discovered that he only does one at a time, and for obvious reasons he doesn't want to use a recently-used pad for whatever he does next. Thus two pads per spot. He has problems, though, if he poops a volume of stuff. If he thinks it'll take more than one sqat he tries to arrange it so each squat is in an area of one pad that won't interfere with the other sqat - so he'll poo on opposite corners. If he doesn't know, then he poops in the middle of the pad, then he's screwed. Well he's not screwed, he just moves over and poops on the floor. It's unclear whether he actually knows he's over the floor or not, and there's really no way to tell what he's thinking. We haven't caught him enough times to see if he's got a sheepish/guilty look.
Luckily this hasn't been a problem today, because we've always been around. We're going to be leaving him home alone tomorrow, so this will be an issue. Strangely enough, he almost never thinks of going downstairs (or upstairs) if there's no space. He'll go down or up if he thinks we're watching him (for privacy), but won't do that for space reasons.
So we'll put down three pads and see what happens.
The other thing of note is we taught him to stand up. So when he's sitting or lying down and you want him to stand, well, now he does. What we can't figure out is how to get him to stop. For example, if he's running, how do you get him to, well, stop? Especially if he's off-leash, which he isn't...but he's getting stronger and pulling it out of our hands every once in a while. Plus he seems to like jumping off of sidewalks, which is a dangerous habit. Maybe we'll do that one before 'heel.'
The two-pad system seems to work pretty well. We have two pads upstairs, two pads downstairs. That way he can pee on a pad then poo on another. We discovered that he only does one at a time, and for obvious reasons he doesn't want to use a recently-used pad for whatever he does next. Thus two pads per spot. He has problems, though, if he poops a volume of stuff. If he thinks it'll take more than one sqat he tries to arrange it so each squat is in an area of one pad that won't interfere with the other sqat - so he'll poo on opposite corners. If he doesn't know, then he poops in the middle of the pad, then he's screwed. Well he's not screwed, he just moves over and poops on the floor. It's unclear whether he actually knows he's over the floor or not, and there's really no way to tell what he's thinking. We haven't caught him enough times to see if he's got a sheepish/guilty look.
Luckily this hasn't been a problem today, because we've always been around. We're going to be leaving him home alone tomorrow, so this will be an issue. Strangely enough, he almost never thinks of going downstairs (or upstairs) if there's no space. He'll go down or up if he thinks we're watching him (for privacy), but won't do that for space reasons.
So we'll put down three pads and see what happens.
The other thing of note is we taught him to stand up. So when he's sitting or lying down and you want him to stand, well, now he does. What we can't figure out is how to get him to stop. For example, if he's running, how do you get him to, well, stop? Especially if he's off-leash, which he isn't...but he's getting stronger and pulling it out of our hands every once in a while. Plus he seems to like jumping off of sidewalks, which is a dangerous habit. Maybe we'll do that one before 'heel.'
