Firstly I must apologize for being over a week late with this post, but we’ve been busy getting ready for the holidays and finishing up everything that needed to be done this time of year.
We celebrated Wellie’s 2nd birthday this month and I made her a snazzy hat as well as amped up a few of her muffins to be some delicious pupcakes. I added bananas and extra blueberries (Wellie’s fave!) and of course, peanut butter icing. The dogs obviously LOVED them and ate them up probably a bit too fast!
We had some setbacks this month and I think it may have had something to do with the fact that Wellie was given up this time last year. She was given up on December 6th, three days before her 1st birthday in 2010. She remained at Animatch for three months before we brought her home and I think this time of year may have brought some feelings of stress and maybe even fears of abandonment back. I’m not sure what triggered them, but she ended up reverting back and was being really bad – peeing inside again, beating up Paddington, barking at everything, getting into things and the list went on. I’ll be honest, it was really tough for us as well and we were wondering what we did wrong.
We soldiered through and decided to tackle the housetraining issues with putting a bell on a string on the back door so she could tell us when she wanted to go out. The problem was that she was barking downstairs while we were upstairs and we thought it was just her barking at random things, but it was actually her telling us she wanted to go out. Not wanting to encourage the barking, we thought the bells may be a better alternative. And boy were we RIGHT!
Wellie, the smartypants that she is, only took 30 minutes to learn how to use them. Each time we let her out, we would take her paw and hit the bells and say “outside”. She figured it out so quickly and we haven’t had an accident inside since we put them up!
She now walks up to them with gusto and hits them really hard – it’s so funny. She is asking to go out more than she needs right now, but while she is still learning, we still let her out every time. The best part is, we can take them with us to my in-laws and my parents’ houses for the holidays and she’ll hopefully realize she can use them there too.
To try them out, we just tied some holiday bells onto twine, but it looks pretty bad. haha. We found some Smoochy Poochie bells at Global Pet Foods in Hintonburg that match out decor and look really nice. We are going to put a nail in the door frame and hang them from there as our back door doesn’t have a knob, but a handle that you can’t hang anything from.
We are looking forward to the holidays and are so happy that Wellie doesn’t feel she needs to be bad for attention now when she wants to go out. If you are struggling with housetraining, I really do recommend bells – they work!!
Happy Holidays from the three dogateers!
Read 9 Months with Wellie here |Read 8 Months with Wellie here | Read 7 Months with Wellie here | Read 6 Months with Wellie here |Read 5 Months with Wellie here | Read 4 Months with Wellie here | Read 3 Months with Wellie here | Read Week 8 here |Read Week 7 here |Read Week 6 here | Read Week 5 here | Read Week 4 here |Read Week 3 here | Read Week 2 here | Read Week 1 here | Read Welcome to Wellie here.
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Liz Bradley is a dog lover who lives in Ottawa, Ontario with her husband,
2 Users Responded in " Ten Months with Wellie "
We used the bell for our first dog and it worked amazingly well. We had just bought a wind chime from the dollar store. Eventually it broke (like 3 years later) and we never replaced it because by then he would ask everywhere! It is a great idea even if she needs it forever!
Merry Christmas!
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