Do You Want the Doggie in My Window

Both of our dogs are retired show dogs. I don't think either of them had much success in the ring. Darla, because her coat is incorrect. We know that she was shown a few times and then bred--she had three or four litters. We thought Buster didn't show well because he is slightly taller than the standard. We knew they had bred him and then sold him to us.

I now know why they didn't try to show him for any length of time. He is virtually untrainable. I love him, I think he has the most adorable personality. But pugs are difficult to train to begin with and Buster has to be among the worst of them all.

You cannot punish him. There is no punishment that seems to have an effect on him. You can yell at him, spank him, whatever but as upset as he might be while it is happening you can tell her forgets all about it minutes later. Rewarding him for good behavior is the same thing. He seems confused by the rewards. Despite all of this, I think that he does know what he is supposed to do he just doesn't care.

Darla has a bladder of steel. She can hold it until the end of time. There are very few reasons that she will pee in the house. Spite is one of them, which led to an ugly period of her pissing in our bed when we first moved into this house. Illness is another, which is how she decorated most of our carpet about a year ago when she had most of her bladder filled with stones. The only other reason she will do it is honestly if Buster does it first. She has a very strong sense of justice and you can tell she is always thinks, "well I am not going to wait if he isn't," right before pissing on the rug.

Unfortunately, Buster was not well trained before becoming part of our family. He just is not well house trained. His previous owners had a doggie door leading out to an orchard and I think that Buster spent most of his time outside. When we moved here our plan was to have stairs added to our deck, fence the yard and put a doggie door out into the yard. We should have had the builder do it and have the cost built into our mortgage. But since we didn't Buster spends a lot of his life in trouble.

So I spent most of the day today cleaning our house. Spot cleaning the carpet. Getting the odor out. It feels good to have the windows open, the house clean and the carpets smelling fabulous.

I am guessing the feeling will end as soon as Buster takes a crap in the middle of my living room.

When we move we are getting hardwood floors.