Cats not included

This isn’t my first rodeo. But it’s been 10 years since I last had a puppy. I know the things I struggled with last time, and the causes of it (a dog with an autoimmune condition that meant he couldn’t eat a normal diet without being very ill). To say the thought of training a part land shark, part piranha, part puppy has been stressing me out NO end.

The last two puppies I had, I stupidly tried, and failed, clicker training. Pft. At this point clicker training feels like an MLM for dogs. Who’s profiting from it? Big Dog Corp? It never worked, and I just shelled out on a stupid clicker. On both occasions my puppies were more interested in everything but the clicker. Stupid clicker.

This time, I thought I’d give one of the many apps a go. So I bought a subscription to ZigZag. The jury (aka Eliot and I) are still out on it. But I’m largely out. Eliot will just do anything for kibble.

Any training programme that arrogantly assumes that you’ll be taking up residence on a sofa overnight for months while you calibrate your puppy to their idea of “we’re right and you’re wrong” is always going to get my back up. Shortly followed by crate training. And anyone who gloats about how they got their dog crate trained can fuck right off.

The good

There are always going to be ups and downs when it comes to training a puppy. You’ll take several gallops forward by a hard reverse back on occasions. And last time I beat myself up at the frustration at so many things going wrong or just not working. Turns out it’s fucking impossible to train a dog when you can’t give them anything to motivate them, because they’re allergic to everything and just about tolerate their kibble. So, a week in, these are the good, the bad, and the ugly.

His bedroom

Eliot made it very clear, by chewing his way out of the pet carrier on the way home, that he was not going to be caged thank you very much. He is a free doggo (no socks were sacrificed for this achievement, just the damn pet carrier).

The pen I bought. Also, a hard pass.

We quickly worked out that the place he’s happiest sleeping overnight is in the kitchen, so that’s become his crate. He settles in there quickly, he doesn’t whine when the door is closed and he’s sleeping well (because I got a camera to spy on him).

Toilet training

One way to make me twitch and make faces like someone putting their nails down a blackboard is how the yanks call it “go potty” or “potty training”. Please, no. Just no.

Bertie took over 6 months to toilet train. Largely because I didn’t have grass in my back garden and because he had, at that point, undiagnosed inflammatory bowel disease. It wasn’t fun or pretty for either one of us.

So I have been properly nervous about a repeat performance with Eliot.

The first few days I was tracking everything, so I’d start to build up the mental muscle memory for signs he needed the bathroom.

We quickly agreed that he preferred the front garden (grass straight out the door) than the back (smells too much like Bertie and it’s not soft under paw as the grass is metres away from the house).

I also worked out he’s a sneaky sod, and unless you’re on a religious poo watch, he will poop on the living room carpet.

Poop signals now include the poomies. This would be where he zooms around the living room like he’s doing a hot lap at Spa Francorchamps… while farting.

However, the biggest surprise was on Friday, a week after he came home, that he walked up to the front door and told me he needed the bathroom. FYI, he was 9 weeks and 3 days old. SO proud of my boy.

It’s still a work in progress, and it will be until he’s a lot older and can hold it for longer. But we’re defo making progress.

Oh, and as for “sleep downstairs” and “get up every few hours”, nobody is coming to tell you you’re a bad human if you put pee pads down overnight for your pupper to use. Yes, it might take a smidge longer for toilet training, but ultimately if you’re not sleeping and they’re not peeing on command at 3 in the morning in gale force winds and driving rain… who are you helping?

The bad

The bad is less bad and more frustrations, largely because I’m tired (my sleep schedule is all kinds of wonky).

Settle

His current nickname is Parkour Pete the Yeeter. Why? Because the second I sit down on the sofa, he turns into a feral-shark-toothed fluffy pogo stick. I’ve tried gradual time-outs (hard core fail). I’ve tried wearing his brain out (it’s like he’s got ADHD). And I’ve tried what the app says about getting him to settle (about as much use as a chocolate teapot).

Last night I opted for playing with him on the floor then getting him down for sleep a bit earlier with dog sounds on Apple Music. Which was more effective until I went to bed and he looked at me like he’d done something wrong. Not a great look.

So today, I went back to the thing I’ve been using for the last week. Notion AI (Clawde, not ChatGPT before you lose your brains). And Opus 4.6, was actually very helpful in its suggestions, and has built me my own custom page with instructions on what to do. Which I’m going to work on this evening. The goal is for him to realise the bed next to the sofa is the best place in the world because that’s where he’ll get treatos.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Sleep schedules

Bertie, bless him, rarely slept as a puppy. I couldn’t get his nutrition right because it took us almost a year to diagnose him, so he was always hungry and always hyper.

Eliot, is very much full on hyper in the evenings. When I need to wind down, he’s fully wound up and a whirling dervish.

“Puppies aren’t babies... blah, blah, blah”. Well, they kinda are. In that they need more sleep than awake time. And trying to get a puppy that’s over tired to go to sleep is a real challenge.

Sadly, I’ve worked out the best way to do that is to put him in the kitchen, with the door closed and dog music on. He properly conks out. Bluey also worked when I had him in the living room. But it’s still very much a work in progress.

The ugly

Ugh. This one is stressful on so many levels. And no, surprisingly it’s not pooping on the carpet, enzyme cleaner and a carpet cleaner gets that sorted. Nor is it the bites, scratch down my cheek or bruises. Or even the whining. It’s the cats.

Cat’s not included

Well, they are in this house. I have two. A 13 year old Siamese called Luna, and a 3½ year old Burmese called Ptolemey, aka Weirdo. When I got Bertie, Luna was apoplectic with me and him. She wouldn’t go near him and hissed the house down. I had another Burmese then, who accepted him but wasn’t overly happy. But then I got Weirdo, and he and Bertie were BFFs, he groomed him (not that Bertie enjoyed it). Weirdo is still grieving Bertie. The backstory is important.

Weirdo is still young and playful. He and Bertie would have a bit of a wrestle each morning. So I thought Weirdo would accept Eliot quite easily. HOOO BOY! Was I wrong. I thought Luna would hate Eliot and stay the hell away from him. Again. SO wrong.

What actually happened was Luna, after a few days walks up to Eliot and sniffs him. If Eliot gets too close, she’ll make it know by hissing at him and leaving the room. Weirdo, however, is ANGRY, all caps, and no apologies. It’s been just over a week, and he will now come into the room with Eliot, and has taken a few tentative steps to sniff him, but he sits behind the stair gate, on the stairs and makes it clear how pissed off he is. So Eliot barks at him.

Meanwhile, if any of the cats run in Eliot’s vision, Eliot things “oooh… friend! let’s play” and chases them. This, is not good.

So I went back to ZigZag as there was a training session about introducing the cats to a dog. I thought, oh, you know what? I’ll see if there’s something about helping with this, because I could really use help with it. And this, ladies and good doggos, is where the app went “cats? What are they?” And I went “is this a fucking joke?” (Think Trent Crimm, the Independent).

It’s at this point I’m really starting to question the efficacy of a training app that doesn’t even bother to cover how to stop your fluffy ball of teeth from thinking your feline family members are fluffy toys.

So back to Notion AI I went, and we now also have a page for training how to stop my furry land shark from trying to pounce on the cats. And I’ve got to say, along with some high value treatos, it’s actually starting to work (and It’s been 4 hours).

I’m hoping that we’ll have cats, and how utterly boring they are, nailed by the end of next week.

Week 1

What would have been super useful in an app, was day one and week one. What to prioritise and what not to prioritise. I found the whole app too overwhelming, like I was failing because I wasn’t keeping up with what it told me I should be doing.

The car training. Sadly, we can’t transport puppies from their breeders to our homes with a Star Trek-like transporter. And the advice was to do it gradually. How? I had a 3 hour solo drive home, with a dog yelling at over 100 dBHL next to me because he was both hangry and unhappy.

Ditto crate training. The paradox of all the training is that you’re supposed to put your puppy in a crate to sleep overnight the first night. But the crate training takes a lot longer. So do you deal with a very unhappy puppy all night the first night or do you settle them somewhere comf?

And don’t even get me started on the article about what the daily schedule looks like. It’s strict and ridged with little room for manoeuvre, and even then it’s not presented up front, it’s an article.

You fit into your puppy’s life, and your puppy fits into your life. You’ve 100% got to find the rhythm together, or one of you is doing the foxtrot while the other is doing the floss.

The weekly summary

I’m tired. My sleeping patterns are off. We haven’t nailed the right ratio of brain draining stimulation for Eliot to his sleep patterns. We’ll get there, but it’s finding the right balance.

We’ve had some poopsidents (sadly one after 10 and one just after 7am, so the carpet cleaner had to wait a bit), in both cases he was a sneaky monkey. We’ve had the post-arrive soft poop (pro-kolin to the rescue!).

We’ve had a great first vet visit (settling by my feet instead of mugging the very nice vet is a big change, but that’s a story for another day).

I think we’re getting there, some things are surprising me in a good way, others are much slower. But it’s all good. He’s a clever button.