Coco, our youngest Chihuahua baby (pictured at left in a pink collared shirt), is just now getting to a point where we can call him house broken. Unfortunately, it took a year and a half, whereas it didn’t seem to take that long with our other Chihuahuas. He got to where he was pee pad trained pretty quickly, but he sort of stalled. I think being a little dog it’s not always pleasant to go outside, especially in cold New Jersey winter.
So, he would just pee inside and save himself from having to endure going outdoors. We bundled him up in a small dog sweater and a small dog coat, and that did help a lot. He would finally start going on walks with the other dogs, but I could tell he wanted nothing more than to get back indoors as soon as possible. He wasn’t focused on doing his business at all.
This led to many gross problems, not the least of which was the stink from dirty pee pads. Our oldest and largest dog, a Labrador and Maltese mix, had taken on the bad habit of eating Coco’s feces from the papers. I read that sometimes wolves in the wild will do this as a way of keeping inferior members of the pack from leaving their mark on the territory. Whatever the case, it’s just plain nasty. Now we’ve started strictly crate training him; we only let him out of the crate when it’s time for his walk. It seems to be finally working, and we were finally able to take up the pee pads. Also, there’s no more poop eating…yeah. Coco likes being secure in his space most of the time; after all, he’s perfectly bred for cute small dog carriers, right?
0 comments:
Post a Comment