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…

Beanie and the other pups have had their first trip into the breeder’s garden, and she’s sent us a new round of pictures.

Not surprisingly it looks like a lot of the garden exploration involved chewing. In fact I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that the breeder’s going to need to replace her garden hose:

In the meantime, we’ve been stocking up on chew toys in the hope that Beanie will chose those over our leather sofa. We’ve got a couple of “Kongs” – hardy rubber toys designed to be loaded with food, and a rubber ball that also acts as a satisfying kibble delivery mechanism. From what I’ve read, it’s a good idea to use such toys for normal feeding, rather than using a typical doggy bowl. Wild dogs apparently spend the majority of their waking hours hunting/scavenging for food. Domestic dogs don’t need to hunt, but handing their food out in a bowl leaves their days very empty, leading to all manner of mischievous behavior (goodbye sofa, plants, shoes, any trailing wires etc.) and excessive dependence on human company.

We’ve also found a couple of puppy training classes nearby. These classes are probably as much about socialization (getting pups to feel comfortable around other dogs, people and children) as they are about training. That makes them pretty much essential, and we’ll definitely be taking Beanie along when we get her.

Over the weekend we received some new photos from the breeder. There were three female pups that hadn’t been picked at that point, and we were asked to say if we had a preference.

Pup #1 was particularly affectionate with everyone she met, but had very sparse markings on her body – she was mostly white. Pup #2 had classic tricolor markings and a sweet face, but was slightly smaller than the rest and was gaining a reputation as an escape artist. Pup #3 also had decent markings and a gentle expression but a rather domed head.

Initially we went for #3 but then spent the rest of the day having second thoughts. And third thoughts. Every time we reviewed the photos our favorite changed. In the end it didn’t matter because the decision was made for us by other people ahead of us in the list: pup number 2 was going to be ours. Here she is:

We drove over to see her today, and the photos don’t come anywhere close to doing her justice! She’s absolutely gorgeous, with a confident, inquisitive and happy nature. It was all pure chance, but I think we got the pick of the bunch. We’ve arranged with the breeder to pick her up just after Christmas – at that point she’ll be about 11 weeks old, and will have had the OK from the vet to explore the outside world. Needless to say, we can’t wait to get her home.

We hung around at the breeders for a good while, holding and stroking our pup, and watching the whole litter at play. It was an amazing thing to see. For about half an hour there was a frenzy of sniffing, chewing, jumping and running around. The fresh newspaper lining their play area was ripped and chewed up in seconds, and the breeder herself was nearly tripped up by a determined assault on her shoelaces. Then quite suddenly the pups ran out of energy and fell asleep in a disorganized heap of paws, bottoms and floppy ears. All except for one particularly vocal youngster that is. He kept going like the Duracell bunny on acid. Whoever gets him is going to have some sleepless nights for a while!

You can see a short video of three of the pups here. Our pup is the one on the left, intently chewing on the legs of a rubber chicken. We’ve called her Beanie – a name that really seems appropriate after seeing her and her siblings jumping about.