Back to the drawing board

The day I've been dreading has finally arrived.

For the last few months, we have been enjoying toilet-trained Danny. We could let him out all around the house and as long as we have a paper out, he'd go on it like some expert marksman. No more worrying about stepping on ;"something wet", or needing to keep bottles of vinegar handy. It was a dream come true.

And all of a sudden, literally overnight, it was back to square one. At first I thought we forgot to give him paper; then, I realised there was a huge wad on the balcony all nice and dry. He now is back to going wherever and whenever he feels like it, and even when he is confined, he will pick the spot WITHOUT paper.

Why? Well, back in puppy class, Danny's first trainer was teaching us about toilet training. It was about confining him to one area and getting him used to having the feel of paper under his feet to do his stuff. We were all happily taking notes, when she said that unfortunately, despite all efforts, when dogs hit 9-11 months, they will untoilet-train themselves. A huge sigh went up. It is sort of like they hit their teenage phase and become rebellious, wanting to test whatever they've been taught. Toilet-training will have to be restarted and once we win that battle, we would have won the war.

Danny is now a week short of 9 months. For the last week every non-papered place has been fair game. We've dusted off our toilet training notes and geared up for Round 2.

*Ding ding!*

Donations of kitchen towels and disinfectant are welcome.

Post-Op Danny

Danny's back to being all happy and sappy again. A real far cry from the sad little thing on Sunday. He's now having his movement restricted cos the vet said that running, jumping, etc., would aggravate the wound.

He's still not too used to the collar. Just yesterday, he tried to go under a chair and the collar got stuck. He just went ahead anyway and ended up dragging the chair with him.



Still, he seems to be taking it in his stride.

His mouth is wet here cos he was drinking water.

The silver lining for him is that he doesn't need to bathe for 2 weeks. So not looking forward to that!

Groggy Doggy

Sent Danny for eunuch-ization over the weekend. When I picked him up, he was seriously drugged out. He didn't even look at me when the vet's assistant handed him over. After that he totted and swayed his way to the car. It was only halfway home that it suddenly occured to him to check that he was with the right guys. He jerked his head up and took a good hard look at me. Satisfied, he settled back down to sleep.

Back home, he was the saddest-looking thing. I wonder if he knew something was missing. It was also his first time with the collar and he kept bumping into things.

All in all, it was a rough, weird sort of morning for him, and he wasn't in the mood to entertain the camera. He kept looking away and eventually, he made his feelings very known:

The rest of the afternoon was spent in La La Land. Even when he woke up, he was nice, quiet and placid.


For once, I had the best dog in the world...