Big and Wee Problems

When Henry came to stay he wasn't house-trained. In fact he'd never been in a house before so we had the mamouth task of trying to house-train him.

It's not as easy training a dog that has passed the cute and cuddly puppy stage, even if technically they are still a big pup as they have learned that it dosen't matter where they go and in some cases if they wee all over the house it makes them feel more secure. But I am a patient person and was fully prepared to overcome all of Henry's problems until he became a super-dog.

During the first few days it was miracle if Henry went to the loo outside. Every night and after every meal and playtime and first thing in the morning I would put him on his lead and walk round and round the garden with him until he perfomed. This worked well when the weather was nice but most of the time during the winter here it blows about 60mph winds with sideways rain, I certainly didn't want to be out in it and I have a big winter coat to wear. For a small skinny balding dog it certainly wasn't much fun at all and he spent most of the time outside trying to get back in.

He was also scared of the wind. You can here it coming from the end of the valley 2.5 miles away and it wooooshes up into the side of the house and every time that happened Henry would croutch down and cower so that didn't make house-training any easier.

Henry also seemed to have a bit of a communication problem. Molly has learned that if she paces around the living room we know she wants to go outside. Henry wanders about, runs about, throws himself about, barks, whines, laughs, lays down, trots and bounces all the time. So you spend most of the time letting him out and he dosen't want to go and then you go into another room to find that he has been to the loo in there and that was what the last batch of energy was all about. There was no consistancy about it and we were trying to work him out while he was trying to work us out, it wasn't easy.

Then we started to turn a corner. I noticed that his 'accidents' had pretty much stopped during the day. I work from home so I'm around all the time which I had thought would be great for settling a new dog in. But as soon as I told Other Half that the accidents were getting fewer Henry would go aack 6 steps and start doing it again. I was totally stuck and didn't know what to do.

I tried every solution possible from 'Get Off' sprays to stop him from wanting to wee on things (which worked for about 4 hours and then he just wee'd on them anyway) to wee disolving solutions designed to clear up the wee and destroy the scent left by it, to making home made solutions of lemon juice and spraying that about the place and trying to cover rotten smells with all sorts of anti bacterial air fresheners. Our house was begining to smell like a kennel and I was exhausting myself trying to sort it out while Henry was exhausting himself trying to keep it smelly. If there was a house-training product or technique I had tried it. And Henry had ignored it.

Finally after five months I took him to the vets. I was trying very hard not to burst into tears as I told the vet about the problem. I wasn't being emotional, I was simply worn out by it all.

The vet listened and made nice noises about getting it sorted out which made me feel so much better. She then gave Henry a good going over, taking some samples etc just in case there was a medical problem at the bottom of this - no pun intended!

There was no medical cause. Part of me felt releived, most of me felt totally deflated that the problem couldn't be solved overnight with a couple of tablets, although actually it wouldn't be great if it was medical for Henry's sake.

On seeing my deflation, the vet then had a really long chat with me about routines and feeding and patience and actually this made me feel lots better and on leaving the surgery I felt re-energised and ready to fight the canine sewerage battle anew. I was also armed with two bottles of super dooper industrial strength wee and poo smell and scent destroyer (which were half the price of all the other stuff I 'd tried).

So off home we went, Henry sitting in the back of the car looking rather insulted by the whole experience.

Back home I got to work with the spray. It smelt of marzipan. Rather odd but I didn't care. Once I'd gone around on my hands and knees sniffing the entire carpet for smelly bits and exterminated the smell I felt so muhc happier. I gave it a night and asked my neighbour to come down the track for a smell test. When she walked in she announced that it didn't smell of wee in our house any more yippeeee! It did smell of marzipan but who cared, it didn't smell of wee.

Strangely Henry hadn't had an accident that night either so I had a blissful morning of no clearing up before my breakfast, oh what joy!