The Litter Box Idea

We made a few decisions today that may seem a bit... defeatist.

First of all, we admitted that the chances of us getting to the big animal store with Iggy in the next week were slim to none. I can't walk that far one way without pain, let alone back, and J. and W. are preparing for their holiday. We could take our bikes, but then we couldn't take Iggy. And if we can't take Iggy, well...

We ended up ordering online. The prices online seemed very reasonable indeed, and I didn't know if the 45% off thing on the dog harnesses would happen in the store, or if the store had the harnesses at all. The harness was the main thing we wanted, anyway.

We bought treats while we were ordering. We can't keep rewarding Iggy with a treat that purposefully comes in 10-stick packages. So we got smaller ones. That's not defeatist, that's just good sense.

Next, we got puppy potty-training spray and a litter box.

The spray is to be used outside mainly. Iggy doing his business outside will be met with praise and affection and treats, so he learns that outside is a happy, fun place.

But Boyfriend and I are facing the facts. Iggy is too scared 50% of the time to do anything with us close by. He's proven that he can hold his pee and poo for up to eight hours in his tiny puppy body if he's scared, only to let fly as soon as we're, to his perception, gone.

I don't know if I'm imagining things, but Iggy 'hides' in his basket if he sees me cleaning up pee or poo. I don't say anything about it, I don't get mad, but woe on me if I try to come close to him shortly after. He shivers and tries to flee, as if he's scared I'm going to explode with rabid dinosaur levels of rage.

So... Litter box. With newspaper inside.

I looked on the internet, and most of the German dog-keeping community sees this as a bad thing. Dogs should be trained to go outside. If you're too lazy to go outside, don't get a dog. Litter boxes are called 'cat loos' in German, so logically, they can only be used by cats.

The more sensible anglophone community said that it's possible, and can be used either as a slow way of house-training a small dog or a solution for (lazy) people with small dogs.

But we're not too lazy to go outside. We take Iggy outside every three hours at least, if not more often, depending on weather and... Well... Iggy. I've given up sleeping in in glorious 10+ hour sessions just so he gets let out first thing in the morning. The lazy is not the issue here.

We know Iggy's not a cat. Cats don't panic when left alone by the people that feed them, especially not if they're mostly terrified of them. Cats don't wag their tails, which Iggy did two more times since my last report.

The problem is, Iggy's scared to 'go' outside. Iggy's scared if I get out the paper towels when he 'goes' indoors.

The litter box is a kind of attempt at trying to fixing things. The idea is: if he has a place to go indoors, when he feels it's safe to go and where we know he won't pee on anything with a current running through it, he'll feel safer. If he does his thing outside when we take him, he gets happy times. We know he likes treats. If he does it inside in the litter box... Well, easier clean-up for us, peace of mind for all. He's not getting treats for using it.

Underneath the shivering, Iggy's a smart puppy. He knows how far a treat has to lie before he can quickly and safely return to his basket without being seen. He knows Boyfriend is less likely to tell him 'no, bad!' when he does something he's not supposed to (so far his two only faults are getting caught defecating indoors and bolting up the stairs to the neighbours' apartment). He knows that, eventually, I'll get distracted by something and he can liberate the treat by my feet. And he knows very much that he's faster than me.

But more than that, he knows where his business was done last. That's probably a scent thing, but Lady never pooed on the same place twice, no matter how badly or well I cleaned.  Iggy seems to very much want to find a place where his turds don't get kidnapped by disappointed humans.

So I'm confident he'll figure out what the litter box is for (eventually), but that he'll realise in time that outside is better. Outside is treats and people being happy at him and room to sniff around.