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Monday, April 9th, 2007
I suspected Millie would enjoy spending time outside during the day once we got her fence finished.
Then the other day we got home from the grocery store, and I notice the y-shaped trail she’s pounded out in the grass. It leads from the gate to her swamp cabin, where it forks. One fork heads for the back left corner, and one leads to the back right corner by the porch. She has also made a trail around the perimeter of the fence.
She whines at first when we leave her out there, but then we peek out the window, and she’s out there tearing around in circles, chasing bugs, or snatching up a toy and looking over her shoulder as if she’s pretending someone’s chasing her. And at night, she’s calmer, her energy spent on activity instead of systematically destroyed every stray object in the house.
She’s also doing much better about the house-training thing. She still has the occasional accident, and we haven’t perfected the process of bed time. Before the fence, one of us took her out for a walk at night and stayed out until she peed and pooped, then brought her in and she slept all night with us in the bed.
Since the fence, we still take her out for that walk before bed, but she sometimes seems very disinclined to poop. Most of the time, it’s fine. She still stays in the bed all night. Other times, she comes to bed but then won’t stay there. It’s dark, and we hear her start her process. She gets up, shakes so that her tag clinks, and goes to the edge of the bed by my feet.
“Millie,” one of us says firmly, “It’s time to go night-night.”
We coax her back up between us and pet her and put her under the covers with us, but as soon as we lay back and try to go to sleep, she lifts the covers up with her nose and goes to the foot of the bed again.
Then comes the little plunk sound that means she has jumped off the bed.
We sigh and, with surprisingly little bickering, decide who will take her out. Darwin usually puts her in her fence, where she spends a fairly contented night (we know because she doesn’t whine or howl, at least not for long).
But we’ve had a cold snap lately, so I’ve felt guilty relegating her to the outdoors. She happily wags her way to the back door and looks even happier when I put on her leash. She poops in short order, and we go back to bed. She doesn’t jump down again. All is well.
The only time she has really misbehaved at bedtime was this weekend. We took her with us when we spent the night at my parents’ house for Easter. It was the same problem as usual, but then when we got back in the room, she would not lay down. She sniffed around the room and scratched at the door and got back up with us, then jumped down and went crazy again.
We did not sleep well. Times like these, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better for her to sleep outside all the time.
But then she’s so sweet in the mornings, emerging from under the covers with one ear flipped back, and rolling over to have her tummy rubbed.
We can’t make a decision on it until we buy her a new doghouse, though. She pretty much shuns the swamp cabin Darwin built as temporary shelter, and really – who can blame her?
We have a doggie door and it works great. If you can bear to put a hole in the door or wall it would probably help with the “who’s going to get up and let her out” part.
I second the motion on that doggie door. It is so liberating…for you both, and Millie.
We had an issue with one of our rescue dogs not wanting to do his business at night, until we finally figured out a way to get him into a new ritual. We started putting him out in the back yard at night as we were very clearly getting ready to go to bed ourselves (we’d make a big deal of turning things off, talking repetatively about “time to go to bed” and things like that). Someone would then watch carefully through a window for him to finally go. When he did, we immediately called him in all enthusiastically and gave him a treat. If he wanted back in before he went out, we wouldn’t let him. It didn’t take him long at all (maybe a week?) to figure out that Our Nighttime Ritual + Him Pooping = Mega Treats. Saved us a lot of mess cleanup or late night whimpering to go out.