…I’m tired and I want to go to bed!

The last few days have been absolutely exhausting for us, and probably for Beanie too. Our little pup has become very confident in her new home, and has quickly exposed the many weaknesses in our so called “puppy proofing”.

It started in the living room. She discovered all the little places that have exposed wires and embarked on a chewing frenzy. We tried a chew deterrent spray which kind of works, but has to be reapplied every few hours to remain effective. A trip to our local DIY store turned up a better solution. We bought some plastic conduit which looks neat for cables in very visible areas, a length of plastic hose to protect less visible cables, and some gaffer tape that is a reasonable match for the color of our skirting boards. We bound up and rerouted all the cables we could, and used the gaffer tape both to hold them in place and to camouflage them a little. Finally, we blocked access to the rear of our TV using a pair of cheap notice boards. This worked very well – Beanie stopped hunting down the wires, and immediately turned her attention to the fake coals in our gas fire. So, another trip to the shops and we had a cheap but quite presentable fire guard. Thankfully that’s put the coals out of reach.. so far..

Even as we were battling to make our living room safer, Beanie began probing our garden perimeter for areas of weakness. A little digging and she almost made it to freedom – Susan spotted two back legs and a tail about to disappear under the fence and dived to catch them. So off I went to the DIY store again, returning with sheets of wire mesh and a staple gun. An hour later and I felt sure our garden was finally escape proof. Beanie thought otherwise, and quickly showed just how strong a determined beagle pup can be by tugging parts of the mesh off the fence. So now the rear of our garden is lined with plant pots, rocks, bricks, even an upturned bucket – anything and everything that can prevent access to the lower edge of the fence. This finally seems to be up to the task of containing our tricolored Houdini.

OK, so that’s the bad stuff. On the plus side, Beanie’s house training is going very well. During the day we take her out very regularly, and certainly after feeding, after waking from a nap and after an energetic play session At night, we’ve come to trust Beanie to let us know when she really needs the loo. This is happening twice a night, but with two of us to share the load it’s not too bad. So far we’ve had no night time accidents, and only a couple during the day (due to us not paying enough attention).

Also, we’ve taken Beanie to our favorite park and discovered that regular dog walkers are generally a really nice bunch. We’ve been given a lot of good tips, and Beanie’s had lots of socialization. At one point, she was proudly walking alongside a fine looking adult Alsatian called Sabre.

There was one other outing of note, though it comes with some embarrassment for me. We took Beanie to a nearby Pets At Home store – one of the very few shops that welcomes dogs. Beanie was coping well with the explosion of new smells, sights and sounds until we rounded the corner of one isle and ran into a Great Dane. Beanie was clearly awed by this giant, and after a timid meet and greet one of the shop staff noticed a little puddle on the floor. Like an overly protective Dad I commented “I think that was the Great Dane, it certainly wasn’t ours”. Yeah right. That Great Dane probably pees enough to make Noah nervous. A little puddle? That’s got scared beagle written all over it!

Yesterday was Beanie-Day. Here are the gory details of our first 24 hours as beagle owners.

The Pickup

We visited the breeder’s home in Carluke yesterday morning and on the way back we had Beanie, a big bag of puppy food, and a wallet full of pedigree, vaccination worming and feeding docs. The journey back to our place takes about 45 mins which is by far the longest car ride Beanie has ever had, so we were a little concerned about how she’d handle it. Those concerns quickly dissolved – Beanie sat calmly on my lap, looking out of the passenger window and enjoying a gentle cuddle. This was great – she’d been quite wriggly the first time I’d held her, but now she was totally relaxed in my company. Forty-five minutes in the car? No problem for our happy little pup!

Then about half way through she started yawning. Fine I thought – she’s so relaxed she’s going to have a nap in my arms. Then she started panting a bit. Fine – we had the heating up in the car quite high, and she was getting all hot from being close to me too. Then abruptly my happy little fantasy was washed away by a sea of brown, foul smelling barf. Beanie opened her innocent little mouth and unleashed a vomit tsunami all over my stomach, my groin, and the car seat. After this she felt much better and wanted to resume her cuddle, and even give me a nice barfy kiss. Aww, little sweetheart!

I spent the remainder of the journey trying not to wretch, and when we finally arrived home I exited the car like a six year old that had messed his pants big time. Susan took Beanie into the rear garden for a pee, while I indulged my desire for a shower and a change of clothes.

It ain’t like this in the books

After the pee break in the garden, Susan prepared Beanie’s first lunch in her new home – a scrambled egg with milk. Now clean and fresh smelling, I got Beanie’s crate ready in the living room, along with a big paw-shaped bed we’d bought months earlier. I popped a few treats into a puppy Kong toy, and got ready to introduce our pup to her crate. The recommended way to do this is to get the puppy interested in the Kong, pop this into the crate and close the door – with the puppy still on the outside. After a minute or so, she should be desperate to enter the crate, and soon come to regard it as her den. At least that’s what the books say.

In Beanie’s case, the Kong was quite interesting while it was in my hands, but as soon as I put it in the crate and closed the door, she lost interest. Hmm… well so much for that approach.

I changed tack. I opened the crate, made a fuss of the Kong and Beanie wandered in. Great! Except she promptly picked up the Kong and took it straight to her paw bed. I tried the same thing with various other toys – a rubber chicken, a comforter that still had the smell of siblings on it – but each time she kept returning to the big paw. It wasn’t that she was at all wary of the crate, it was just that the paw was clearly way more comfy.

A bit of lateral thinking produced the solution. We stuffed the paw into the crate, tossed in a couple of her toys and Bingo! One happy, cosy beagle in her crate.

Time for the Vet

The afternoon went pretty much without incident. Beanie kept wanting to join us on the sofa, but we held to the rule of not letting her on the furniture, using a mixture of distraction and Dog Whisperer style body language (the latter had mixed results – we’re starting to see how important it is to have body language, intent and emotional state all working together consistently).

Pretty soon it was time for a visit to the vet. We’d booked a session some time ago to introduce Beanie and get a chance to ask the 1001 questions we had about chipping, health care, neutering and so on.

This time, there was no barfing in the car – which no longer smelled of vomit, thanks to some wonderful stain removing wipes from “Simple Solutions”. (They come in packs of 12, and have a picture of a guilty looking beagle on the front – pure coincidence I’m sure).

Beanie was great at the vets – she was quiet and didn’t fret or struggle once, which made us both very proud of her. There was no doubt in our minds that we’d got the most well behaved pup of the litter, a belief we shared with the vet staff. They exchanged knowing glances for some reason.

It’s been a hard day’s night…

When we got her home from the vets, she had a good long sleep to recharge her batteries. I guess they must have been on a very weak charge before because when she woke up, she was Bionic Beanie. Faster, stronger, peskier and well capable of causing six million dollars worth of damage if left unsupervised for more than a few seconds. Every so often she’d run out of juice and fall asleep, only to awaken with even more energy. Clearly she’d been a little subdued when we first brought her home, but now she was relaxing and settling in. A good sign, but extremely tiring!

Before long we decided to call it a night. I set up the crate in our bedroom, but in our exhausted state we decided against the “closed crate with scheduled toilet breaks” method. Instead, we fenced off a small corner of the room and put the open crate in there, along with a housetraining pad and a bowl of water. We’d been warned to expect some crying over the first few nights, and Beanie duly obliged, but this died away after a few minutes. Beanie woke us up a couple of times later in the night, but we assumed this was because she needed the loo. The first time, that was certainly the case. The second time, well either she was just bored and wanting a play, or she didn’t quite need a pee enough to brave one of Glasgow’s typical winter downpours. Regardless, she didn’t leave any unwanted presents in the room, and didn’t use the pad. Not a bad start at all!

We’re going to be collecting Beanie in a little over two weeks, so my research into house training has gone into overdrive. Since beagles have a reputation for being difficult to house train this is something I want to get right from from the very first day!

I started out with a read through Ian Dunbar’s excellent book “Before & After Getting Your Puppy”. This recommends using short-term confinement (a crate) and a larger, longer term confinement area complete with an improvised puppy toilet area (pads, newspaper etc). Since the puppy has an instinctive desire to avoiding soiling her den – the crate – she quickly learns the idea of going “outside” on a particular spot. This is reinforced by praise and treats whenever she goes on the right spot. Over time, the den expands to become the whole house, and “outside” really means outside.

That’s fine as far as it goes, but it leaves quit a few questions unanswered. Specifically:

• If you’re home all day is it really necessary to use the puppy toilet idea? Why not just use the garden if you have one?
• If you don’t have a makeshift doggy toilet inside the house, what should you do at night to avoid accidents?
• If you’re using a clicker for general training, would it also be a good idea to use the clicker for house training to signal a jobby well done?

An extended Google session turned up plenty of sites that simply paraphrased Ian Dunbar’s advice, but I also found a few articles that gave me the extra information I needed:

http://users.visi.net/~lfleck/grreat/booklet/housebk.html

http://tinyurl.com/2ols4u

http://www.clickersolutions.com/articles/2001/housetrain.htm

Pulling all this together, I’ve come up with a plan for house training Beanie, who will be nearly twelve weeks old when we get her:

• Don’t let her have the full run of the house until she is fully house trained
• During the day, any time Beanie’s not on a walk, having a play/training session or in the garden doing her business, she’s going to be confined to her crate. We’ll take her out for a toilet break every hour or so, also after she wakes from a nap, after feeding, and after energetic play sessions.
• At bed time, she’ll get a visit to the garden and then be put in her crate in our bedroom. Given that she’ll already be twelve weeks old when we get her, I think we can try going without setting the alarm for another toilet trip during the night. Hopefully if she does wake up and need to go, she’ll alert us in some way. Obviously if we wake up to find a dirty crate, I guess we’ll have to revise that and use the alarm clock for a week or two!
• We’ll use the clicker to signal approval of each successful garden fertilizing session, and immediately follow it with a really tasty treat and heaps of praise.

Well that’s the plan. Only time will tell if it’ll work…