| Potty Traning an Rescue Dog
I have just adopted a dog from the APS in Durham. She is about 1.5 y/o. When I first brought her home, she was great about taking care of her business outside and waiting until I returned from work. However, now she is defecating and urinating while I am away (and yesterday while I was home in the evening). I take her for walks every day to get her exercise at which time she will go outside; however, she still is relieving herself inside. How can I help her understand the difference? A: Make sure you are using a set schedule for her to go outside and keep using positive reinforcement. Our trainers recommend to keep working with her and positive reinforcement. When she is outside and does her business, give her a treat (it doesn't have to be a high-fat treat like a beggin-strip, just a small piece of her kibble, or a small training treat). She will learn that when she goes outside, she gets a treat. Are you using a crate when you are not home? That is one other recommendation. If she has the roam of the house when you are not home, she can very easily urinate and defecate in one room and lay down in another. Talk to a dog trainer about the proper ways of crate training, so it is enjoyable for both of you, and it may help reduce the number of accidents in the house. Over time, you may be able to leave her out of the crate, but I would start with one initially, until she gets the routine down.
2 beagles bring out my maternal instincts
I became a big fan of beagles when I fell in love with my husband's beagle mix Spike while we were dating. He was such a friendly dog who continues to live in our hearts. Being the researcher I am, I had to find all the information I could about beagles. They are part of the hound family and are used in hunting and in tracking animals such as rabbits. They go wherever their noses take them and are considered very noisy. The breed can grow to about 15 inches tall. Their weight usually ranges from 10 to 20 pounds. Their colors are usually a combination of white, cream, black and brown. Beagles are considered to be very high-energy dogs who are also very social. They love to eat and are always searching for food. Beagles are also very stubborn with a short attention span, which is why training can be a challenge and can take a lot of patience.
Puppy love well worth the scrutiny
We filled out the application, answering detailed questions about our lifestyle, our past, our plans for the future. We got through the interview. They came to inspect our house. No, we were not hoping to become foster parents or applying for jobs at the CIA. We were trying to adopt a puppy. In our ignorance, we had expected this to be a fairly straightforward process: Locate the available pups online, select our squirmy darling, prove we weren't real-life Cruella DeVils plotting to sew fur coats out of Seattle's unwanted canines, and voila: We'd be dog owners! Oh, how little we knew. Most shelters wanted us to fill out an online application before allowing us to see their dogs. Fair enough. We opted for Mike McGavick-style full disclosure, (foolishly) assuming we had nothing worth hiding: No, we didn't have any kids.
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