Nadine had spent a fair amount of time outside by now. My neighborhood is a cornucopia of dogs and their smells. I figured there would be accidents inside, but I didn't figure she would just refuse to do her business outside, what with all the signs, or smells at least, pointing to yes. Yet, who knows what the facilities were like at her previous accommodations? Many puppy mill dogs live in cages stacked on top of each other and don't get "walkies" as labeled by my mom. They go in their pens and that's that. She liked to explore the outside, but she didn't understand that she was also to pee in it.
Until she met Emmett. Hooray for Emmett!
I was planning to take Nadine out with another dog in the building named Lucy. I thought maybe Nadie needed to see what other dogs do so she could get the idea. Timing never worked out, but on the way back from the vet, the Nadester and I ran into my friend Melissa and her energetic, enthusiastic and very sweet cattle dog mix, Emmett. I put Nadine down so she could meet Emmett. Sniffs were exchanged, approval granted and we walked on. I thought she might be more interested in Emmett, given her life with three sisters. Not so much. She didn't dislike Emmett, but wasn't jumping for joy at a playmate either.
Nadine is like the girl who's been jilted one too many times - she won't jump into any new relationship before trust has been established. There is a pair of dogs that live across the street that she loves to antagonize and a poodle in the building who is a walking buddy (his owners and I help each other out on occasion when the other has an after-work event), but she's met them many times now. She is a respectable southern gal, after all; any canines who come a-courtin' shouldn't expect any petting until at least the third date.
We walked for maybe a block when Emmett did his thing. Nade gave it a sniff and suddenly started to spin like a whirling dervish. Holding her leash up so the silly thing wouldn't get completely tangled up, I watched as she spun faster and faster for 10 seconds and then dropped off the kids at the park, so to speak. Finally, success! After that day, she started getting better and better about going outside. She still had accidents inside, but she was more often doing her business outside as well.
The vet had warned me that she might never be housebroken. Teaching an older dog this trick was going to be no simple task. On top of it, I live in a condo. I can't just pop open the door every hour or so in the hopes she will go outside rather than in. The second scoop on the training cone was my firm believe in using positive reinforcement in her training, but Nadine wasn't falling for it. After her first outdoor success, I tried to give her a treat. She snubbed it like a tofu dog at a frat party. I found she wouldn't eat outside. How exactly do you train a dog with treats when they won't take the treat?!
Well, lucky for me, I didn't have to worry about it for long... just like when I was a kid and we adopted a dog that I was expected to look after and instead my poor mother ended up caring for, I would toss Nadine's training problems to mom. What a rotten child!
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