Housetraining the Beast

It took Brenda a month to pee in front of me inside of the apartment, and another three months to pee outside. You read that correctly.

She would slink away and pee out of sight. I had to follow her around and jump and scream and give her a hug when I caught her peeing—no matter where that was. I had to let her know that nothing bad was going to happen to her again for peeing. I figured she was so bathroom-shy because in her previous prison she was, at best, yelled at for peeing. I’m choosing to not imagine the worst case in that scenario. I can only hypothesize, but considering the urine burns she was found with on her paws, I’m fairly certain her dysfunctional relationship with bodily fluids has been going on for some time.

Monitoring a dog with peeing issues may seem like a challenge—and it was, I’m not trying to say it wasn’t—but one made easier due to the size of my apartment. At 400 square feet there isn’t much surface area to taint. The urine releasing was contained to the office for the first week because she preferred to do exist underneath my desk, especially when I was sitting at it. And because we couldn’t leave her alone with Porter and Sadie at first out of fear for what they might do to each other when left to make decisions on their own, Brenda was enclosed in the office when we left for any length of time.

Her bed was under the desk and newspaper was strewn in front of the bookcase. Our apartment is especially pee unfriendly, though, because there isn’t a floor in the place that’s on an even level. The floor under the bookcase is especially askew. After a week of spraying cleaner under the bookcase and hoping the urine wouldn’t ferment and seep through the wood and grow like some toxic vine up into all the novels I haven’t yet had time to read, we decided to move Brenda’s bathroom—and bedroom—into the kitchen.

That may seem strange, but aside from the bathroom, which barely fits one person and cosmetics, the kitchen is the only full room in the apartment. (Note: our bedroom is also our living room.) We put up the plastic baby gate that at one time we contained Porter with at first until after three seconds he realized that he was strong enough to knock it over. On Brenda’s first pee in the kitchen I was brutally reminded that the kitchen floor is even more uneven than the office. I spent the next week continually moving the butcher block out of the way to dab up pools of urine that had collected in the floorboards below. Luckily, the butcher block is on wheels.

By this time, Brenda and Sadie had worked out their differences. One puncture to the ear and Brenda was in her place and Porter respected Brenda so much he looked away anytime she entered the room. I felt confident moving Brenda’s bathroom to the hallway. No incline and accessible from every room in the apartment. This is where her bathroom remains to this day. Specifically, her abode is newspaper lined with Bounty paper towels—the kind they advertise as strong enough to wring out and use again. I don’t use it again, of course, but I’ve found it’s the only thing absorbent enough to sop up all of Brenda’s urine. Like so many rescues she drinks water like she’s never had it before and somewhere along the line I decided that giving her unlimited water was more important than small pees.

Brenda has occasional accidents in the kitchen and the office but it’s my own fault for moving her bathroom around so many times. It was a bigger challenge to get her to go to the bathroom outside. She would just hold it and hold it and hold it. At the end of long walks we’d joke about needing to rush home because Brenda had to go to the bathroom. When I tried staying outside with her until she was forced to pee, it took five hours. I lavished praise on her but I don’t think she got the connection. She peed because otherwise her bladder would have burst.

I owe her peeing outside to the crate (and a gentle suggestion from my friend Sarah, who is also a dog trainer.) I was complaining that Brenda had pooped on my bed three times that week and that I was running out of patience—and clean sheets. The next day I borrowed a crate and kept Brenda in it all times except when on walks. By the second long walk she was peeing outside. I don’t think the crate would have worked at the beginning, but once she was comfortable with me and her new environment she let it flow freely.