Poo Poo and Pee Pee Time!

Puppies – Toilet training – otherwise known by puppies and their furparents as “poopoo and peepee time”

Ah – the joys of toilet training… From the moment we picked up our puppies from our breeder, the uppermost thoughts on our mind have been:

Have they just eaten?

Have they just had a drink?

Have they just woken up?

Have they been playing for a few minutes?

If the answer to any of those is YES – then YES – they need to be taken out to do peepee and poopoo!

The first thing we did when we brought them home was to take them out of their travel crate and put them straight onto the grass area where we would be taking them to do their business.  From then on, the scramble has been to observe and learn what their pre-toilet signals are and react quickly enough to them that we can take them out to their toilet area in time.

The first few days were wonderful as they had been crate trained for bedtime by our wonderful breeder – they slept through from about 11pm to 5am before calling out to us. Then as they started to grow a bit and gain in energy to play more, and need more food, this knocked them out of their routines. So, we’ve had a good week of interrupted sleeps between the two us having to get up to take them to the toilet. So, in fact it is very much like having a human baby in those first few months of nappy changing and tears. Sometimes I have gone into work having had very little sleep and since no one has any regard for sleepless nights unless it is due to a human baby – I carry on keeping this part of my life private at work – I really was too cranky to be polite to those who just mock the level of care I put into my furbabies. Thankfully, the puppies seem to be back onto a good routine of sleeping through the night again = so yay!!

Pee is great, but please don’t watch me, I’m really shy!!!

Sometimes toilet training isn’t fun for fur-parents, especially at 2.00am in the pouring rain?

Through the joys and exhaustion of the first week or so having the privilege of two wonderful puppies in our lives, I am reminded that I actually have it all wrong. We always talk about toilet training our puppies – but actually getting a puppy to go to the toilet outside is all about training the fur-parents/ human guardians.  It is completely natural for a puppy to have a pee when they need to, wherever they are. They only learn to go to the toilet in a specific outdoor location if the fur-parents work hard and work consistently to provide an alternative venue when they need to pee or poop.

We have had a few accidents in the house. Each time, I could look back on the routines of the puppies before the toilet accident and I can accept that I was missing a signal because I was eating/ talking/ having a cup of tea. So – as always, it’s on me if my puppy does not get to go the toilet outside, it’s never the fault of my puppy.  I have a bottle of cleaner spray and kitchen roll at the ready to wipe up and then clean up any accidents quickly.

The positive news is that I have developed more of a routine – I don’t have to actively think about taking my puppies to the toilet as much as I did on day one, through regular observation and getting to know my puppies and over one week of meals, sleeps, playtimes I can catch their official and unofficial signals well. In other words – great news – I have been “toilet-trained”!