We dog-sat our favorite shih-tzus over the weekend. They make me laugh. Bandit likes to bark at random things and chew on sandals and got herself “stuck” under our bed TWICE in TWO DAYS; on the other hand, she has also never had an accident in our house. Gizmo doesn’t bark or chew and has the perfect temperament and behavior; on the other hand, she has accidents in our house despite our efforts to avoid it. (On one memorable occasion, she peed in at least SIX DIFFERENT SPOTS in the bonus room while we were at work.)
Gizmo doesn’t like walking in the grass, probably because she is so short. When I let them into the backyard, I have to physically pick her up and place her in the yard in order for her to get the point that “you are supposed to poop now.” She’s also scared of storms, like the one we had this morning around 5 am. (We got an inch of rain! Yay!!) We let her into our bedroom in hopes that would keep her calm, but that wasn’t enough to keep her from peeing on the carpet while we slept. Sigh.
[iframe width=”640″ height=”360″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/b6GaXWGcZXw” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen]
On the fun side, we also discovered that plastic toy bugs are vicious, scary things as you can see from the video above. (Gizmo is the one that just barks and barks, which is hilarious because she NEVER barks otherwise. Bandit is the one who runs around and paws at the toy bug.)
Dogs are cute. But dumb.
You could always get baby gates and barricade them into your dining room or kitchen, where there is no rug. Then it matters less if they pee on the floor.
We gated the bonus room after Gizmo went crazy up there once. It’s impossible to gate the dining room and kitchen — our floor plan is too open for that — so the only real place to confine her to tile would be the bathroom.
In retrospect, we should have put her in the bathroom last night knowing she doesn’t like storms and that when she gets scared, she poops or pees.
Sorry about the peeing problem. Once they’re trained (and in a familiar environment) dogs are lots of fun!