Changing Spaces

After doing a brief survey of the other dogs at puppy school about the status of their potty training, I decided unilaterally to move Rocket from his lux dog palace back to his cramped efficiency.

Rocket was wetting his palace every day at least once and often twice and at seven months old, this needs to stop. I am tired of the odor and the laundry and the pee. We've been doing this since he was eight weeks old and the whole thing has been going on for too long and its more than time for me to do something about this. I know he can do it, its time to stop finding reasons to blame myself for each incident and start making him feel as bad as I have. Its time to share the joy and being him into the conversation.

Enter the little box. Dogs allegedly do not like sleeping in their own waste  - Rocket on the other hand, never seemed to mind bunking with his - and they sell special crates that come with an adjustable wall that allows you to shrink and expand the space accordingly. When you are in active potty training mode the puppy has almost no room at all and simply does not have the room to relive himself. As he gets better and better at holding it, you expand his space until he has become trained and ultimately, has the whole crate to enjoy.

He was getting very good at  wandering to the front of the enormous crate and relieving himself and then happily tippy-toeing back to his bedding to make himself comfortable. I want him to be comfortable without creating his own moats.

Clearly the palace was too big. And pretentious, his own moat? really? He is a pure breed but I think he needs to back away from the attitude. To be honest, as nice as it was that he was comfortable and happy in the palace, I think I would be more comfortable and happy if he would become potty trained and since I am the biped, I trump.

Small houses are gaining in favor after all, smaller is better and greener and  easier all the way around. I tried to explain this to him that first night but he didn't want to hear it

Enter the Efficiency. Its very-small, not tiny, but its not what he had become used to, but once he becomes continent, he can have his cushy lifestyle back.

Today on his first day back at the efficiency he was dry all day. I fear this is because he slept all day because he was exhausted after barking all night. I seriously started rethinking my unilateral decision making after he barked for an hour after we went to bed and then when he barked for another hour after he woke up at 2:05AM at go out - A win, really because instead of peeing his box, he told me he wanted to go out, but peeing the box at night hadn't really been our problem in a very long time. I think he decided if we were going to go backwards, we going to use the way back machine to get there. But. He was dry in the morning and when I came home for lunch and when I came home after work.

I'm going to keep him in the efficiency for a month and then we'll re-evaluate.