Dog Door and Voyeurism

We bought a dog door for Coco to use. The hope is that eventually she'll be able to go to do her potty on her own without us needing to supervise her. Once she can be trusted to pee and potty on her own, then we'll start giving her more freedom around the house when we're gone during the day. Currently we have to be there to help her go potty since we need to open the patio door to the outside (where she goes potty.)

I'm not sure how long it will take her to learn how to use the dog door and eventually go on her own accord but hopefully it isn't that long.

On another note, both Sadie and Coco got very lucky since Ming worked from home part of the day today. They played and played all afternoon, as the photo below depicts (yes, I'm a voyeur ^_~)

Coco and Sadie Day 7

Sadie continues to be a challenge. She has now proven she can walk and pee simultaneously while in the house. Yesterday she pee'ed on the floor on the way to the designated pee area! O.o You can see the dribble marks from where the largest puddle is to where the designated pee area is. *sigh* Apparently she decided that walking and peeing isn't so hard after all.

Sadie is quite the contradiction. Sometimes she is very well behaved and other times she is positively obstinate. Sometimes she does her pee and poop exactly as we intend her to do and eats without much prompting. Other times she'll positively refuse to pee or poop and won't touch her food and/or tries to stare you down into cowering and giving her some wet food. She obviously has not learned yet that she isn't the "king" in this household and that she can't get her way; she needs to live by the rules we set. Sometimes Sadie will refuse to eat her kibble except for a little nibble and looks up at us expecting us to give in and shower her with wet food. We won't give in though and she's going to learn that if she doesn't want dry food, then she won't get anything. I find it very interesting that sometimes she can be an angel and be well-behaved and other times she's very ... trying.

The best we can do is continue to be firm and hope she starts learning that you catch more flies with honey than you do with .... well however the saying goes. :) If she behaves then she gets more play time with Coco and more attention from us. If she doesn't behave she gets more crate training time and doesn't get showered with any affection.

When Coco and Sadie play they play very rough. I think it's good exercise for the two of them; it works out the extra energy they have as well as keeps their spirits up. We have now only let the two of them play together in the pen. Confining their play area keeps them safe and keeps them from running into cords or furniture. We've also found that their rough play has led to our rug getting a few battle scars. :( They've played so roughly that a few woven strands of the rug have started to come undone. Yes, best to put the two in a pen and away from carpet so that we can preserve our carpet but still let them have fun together.

New day, new routine

After yesterday's "nugget" incident, we decided to try and switch up Sadie's routine a bit. I built the pen so that we have a more controlled space for the pups to play in, but when Sadie went in there, she didn't want to play with Coco and just moaned for a while. Eventually, she fell asleep, which was good.

Last night was the first night Sadie ate all of her food too. We've realized that it's very easy to distract her so even when we want to praise her when she eats, it sets her off and she gets confused and forgets about eating. Lesson learned: Once she starts eating, shut yer trap and let her eat in peace! The other good news is that she ate an entire serving of only dry food.

This morning, Sadie seemed to get into more of a routine. She finally heard nature call and relieved herself on both fronts. This was a bit of a relief because it's the first sign that she may be settling back into a routine. Immediately after, I took her to eat and with just a little bit of coaxing, she started to eat and finished off another bowl of dry kibble along with some water.

Today, I'm going to do a bit of crate training, to make sure that Sadie knows that she uses the bathroom outside and gets comfortable with the routine. It won't be so different from her normal day, except that she will have to stay in her crate for the day. I hope that by the end of the week, she knows to always do her "business" outside and then we can start emphasizing her the commands for #1 and #2 :)

Coco seems to be doing okay. She definitely holds her head up high like she's the queen of the house. She likes to nip at Sadie to try and entice her to play, and sometimes gets more than she bargains for. It feels like Coco is fighting for a bit more attention now that there are two dogs in the house and she's starting to be a bit more aggressive in her attempts. We give both of them a lot of love and attention, and Coco will need to learn that she can't beg her way into every situation.

Coco and Sadie Photos (Days 1-5)

Here are some photos taken of Coco and Sadie during Sadie's stay with us.












Sadie goes on her back while playing


Coco likes to practice standing against Sadie when they play

Coco and Sadie Day 5

Today was the first day we've had Sadie and had to get ready to go to work. Sadie is proving to be quite the handful. She pooped on the carpet again! While Sadie was walking in the living room she pooped! This is going to be much tougher to deal with Sadie's pee/poop habits if she poops while walking if we can't anticipate it. O.o

Coco and Sadie Day 4

Sadie has started to get over her separation anxiety . She and Coco have started playing pretty roughly together, enjoying themselves the entire time. It was such a nice day outside that we decided to let the two of them run around outside. They had a good workout running around outside and I washed all 8 paws once they were done (black paws on white dogs are just no fun to have on the inside of a house.)

Sadie has started to realize the benefits of tummy rubs. Ming and I have started to give her tummy rubs and she has enjoyed them, sometimes even getting down on her back to try to get us to give her the tummy rub.

While the two pups were playing outside Sadie must have eaten something that she shouldn't have. She ended up feeling ill all day and finally throwing up mid-day. She threw up while in her crate, thereby making a mess of herself, her crate, and her blankie. Needless to say she had to get a bath and get cleaned up all over again. We washed the crate pad and her blankie since they also got dirty. The good news is that Sadie appears to be back to normal.

She ate her dinner more quickly tonight than she has the previous meals. She still needed to be hand fed part of her meal but at least time time we didn't have to hand feed her the entire meal and she actually finished off her dinner portion (Coco always wants to finish off Sadie's leftovers but this time around she didn't get to have any scraps.)

Day 3... Continued

Can an old dog be taught new tricks? The answer appears to be yes.

Over the past few days, we started to get Sadie to respond to commands. She now does "sit" and "down" on command nearly every time. Every so often, she tries to resist the down command and sits instead but we don't praise her until she gets all the way to the ground. It is taking her less time to sit and go down now, although it looks like she's a bit stiff getting into position.

On our walk, we also decided to do some role playing. Earlier in the day, Coco and Sadie were playing a bit on the side yard and Sadie is clearly the "dominant" one. Coco would nip at Sadie for a while until Sadie finnaly got Coco to roll over showing her dominance. During our walk, Cindy and I intentionally made Sadie walk behind Coco and I kept Sadie firmly by my side with her new training collar which. We didn't realize how much the pack mentality had changed until tonight when Sadie would roll over onto her back repeatedly while playing with Coco.

Sadie has graciously stepped down from her position as pack leader for the day, but will this trend continue?

We'll keep track of some of Sadie's commands and how she's doing:

Sit - does this very well!
Down - does this most of the time. She forgets every so often, or tries to resist. She gets into position more quickly on Day 3
Paw - she normally responds to this
Other paw - I think this is a new trick for her, but she picked it up pretty quickly. I still have to pick up her paw every once in a while.
Stand - She seems to like this one, but we're just trying it out. We say "stand" and pat our thighs and she normally hops up on her hind legs.
Come - She's starting to do this on our terms. Before, she would stare at us, or ignore us. Every so often, she would seek shelter under a table or chair...