House Breaking, Rule Breaking, Biting and Barking!

As a new puppy owner, I'm faced with the naughty behaviour any puppy brings home with them. The four naughty bees! House breaking, breaking the rules, biting and barking! Every puppy needs to learn, and its your job to teach them the room mate code of conduct. It's just difficult to know where to begin...

A good start is an attempt at house breaking your puppy, he may have come from a farm or a barn where it was acceptable to do his number ones and twos on the floor, the mummy dog cleans up after the baby dog and a good level of hygiene is restored. Not in my house. The best start for your puppy, so they say, is to take him straight outside, plonk him down on the grass or 'chosen area for excretion' and say some magic words. Fantastic! The puppy did a wee outside! However, he still isn't potty trained. After the excitement of going to the toilet in the right place, the delicious treat, the 'Good Boy!' The high five and the special 'you went to the toilet' dance, he's just ran straight back in the house and weed once again on that delightful fur rug you brought while trekking through Ikea. Dexter thinks this might be indoor grass, so really isn't sure what he's doing wrong.

So after the many accidents inside the house, I am well equipped with an industrial sized kitchen roll, pet safe antibacterial cleaner, carpet cleaner for those bigger accidents and my strongest weapon, willpower! This willpower is soon deflated once Dexter realises how much fun he can have by catching the end of the kitchen roll in his mouth and darting off through the house, leaving behind him a rapidly unravelling stream of paper, a very frustrated owner and a trail of his own poo through my cream carpets and furry Ikea rug. He has failed obedience training for one day.

Alas, we move on, we try the newspaper and the puppy pads, dedicating a tiny square patch of his very own for a paper potty, just in case we don't make it to the garden quite in time. I turn around for a few seconds, only to realise it's not a puppy I own, but a shredder, a live shredder. Take that fraudsters! Not even I read my own post anymore!

So we are at the chewing phase, which I am told lasts quite some time and Dexter has expensive taste. What's destroyed behind door number four? My Sol Cal Sandals, the edges of the Ikea rug, the tassells on my grandmother's leopard print handbag, anything that gets posted through the door, the freshly bought and written stack of Birthday cards to post to various friends and relatives this month and a pair of knickers. Among other items I have prised from my puppy's jaws including my Blackberry and the laptop charger. So we are working on commands, 'leave it' and 'drop it'. We're getting there slowly.

Through these frequent occasions in which I have my fingers down the back of my dog's throat to fish out my desirable items, he's acquired a taste for chewing on my hands. It's not quite biting, or at least that's what I said to the rather cross parent of the neighbour child when Dexter left his tiny teeth marks on the arm of her six year old. So we are working on ignoring the bad behaviour and praising the good and we're making yet more progress!

Dexter chewing what he is supposed to chew!

My sister sent me a very apt link today!

Dexter doesn't really bark, but it made for nice alliteration. The hardest part of the naughty behaviour is the telling him off, I really don't want to raise a bad dog, or be that person people begin to avoid because their dog is unruly and obnoxious. But he is just too cute to tell off sometimes, and he's mastered the puppy eyes! My dog knows when he's in trouble, which is a good start. He skulks off to a favourite corner and looks very sad and disappointed in himself. Which only makes me feel like a terrible person for telling off such an adorable creature, and giving him cuddles and fuss until he smiles and wags his tail again.