Well, this weekend was bell-weekend.
So I get a bell and tie it up near the door (it's not ON the door, so it doesn't ring when the door opens/closes or is accidentally hit by passerby humans or critters). Every time I let the critters out I'd either ring the bell myself or put their noses (or in Chico's case, his paw - he's supposed to jump for it) up to it. I started this around .... um.... noon? Now, these dogs go out a lot. I think half the time Saki just wants to play. She loves snow. Anyway, by 4 or 5 I'd stand by the bell and say "Saki, you need to go outside and go potty?"... she'd nudge the bell with her nose. HOURS! She doesn't ring it before she comes & tells me she needs to go out, but hey.. I'm impressed either way.
Except every now & then she'll ring it on her way in the house...
The jury is still out on the intelligence of Saki. Gimme 1/2 hour with her and I can teach her a trick. A couple days, she's a pro at it. At 8:00pm she's barking at me... nope, doesn't need to go potty... she wants to go to bed. So I have to walk her into my room so she can walk herself in her kennel & I can shut the door on her.
But try to teach the dog to poop outside and she's as stupid as a bucket of rocks.
Potty? 99% down. The 1% is nobody paying attention to her or she's just gotta go!
But poop? I don't get it. She will HOLD it to go in the house and do it. I'm not making this up. She won't potty in the garage, but she'll poop in there. I've taken her "accidents" and thrown them outside so she can smell it and think "hmm this is where this stuff goes"... but nooooooo. She can make a grown man proud of her farts, so when I smell them I take her outside - if she poops I make a huge deal about it... I call the neighbors, plan a party, the whole works. But next time? She'll poop in the house.
So she's learning tricks... sit, down, stay, crawl, sit up, fetch, drop it (next it's putting her toys away - seriously, I'm going to teach this dog to clean up after herself.).... she's doing the potty thing pretty good, she's ringing a friggin' bell on her way outside, knows her bedtime and knows how it's done, but she can't figure out the concept of poppin' outside?
So then I took her out this morning, like I usually do. Let her back in and went to fill up my coffee cup. I glance over into the living room and she's in the poop stance! NOOOO SAKI NOOOOO!!! She ran from me, but I just said "lets go outside" like it was normal... I did see she she pooped a little out there, so I let her come in.
I was upstairs on the computer for about 10-15 minutes and was reading forums when.... heard the bell ring..... ran downstairs and Saki wanted to go out! This is the FIRST time she's done it on her own like this!
It gets better.....
She went outside and POOPED!!!!!!!!
.... so I guess she wasn't done poopin' afterall.
Lets hope this isn't a fluke and she keeps this up.
Now if I could just get her to stop chasing her tail all the time.
(Psst.... it's day #31 today!!!!)
