Today is a big day for Scully! She had her last puppy vaccination last week, and today is the official first day that she is safely allowed to go anywhere, including places where other dogs go.
So to celebrate I walked her down to Berry Island, which has a grassy park by the harbour where dogs are allowed off-leash. Here she is, playing on the grass for the first time!
Toilet training has been progressing pretty well recently. We had six days in a row with no toilet accidents in the house, and we were going for seven days in a row, but unfortunately she had one little peeing accident on the carpet yesterday, so we’ve had to reset the counter. We’ve obtained a dog bell which hangs near the front door, and we’ve been training her to ring it if she needs to go outside for toileting. Two days ago she rang it of her own accord for the first time, and yesterday she did it twice – each time we followed up by taking her straight outside and she peed on the grass each time. So that seems to be going pretty well (apart from yesterday’s accident).
She’s sleeping well through the night now. We put her in her crate in the bedroom with us when we go to sleep, and she settles in pretty quickly and sleeps soundly. I’m getting up around 03:30 each morning to take her down for a toilet, as she’s not old enough to be able to hold it in all night yet, but we’re slowly extending the time. She’s very sleep and groggy at 03:30, but she goes on the grass once outside, and then I pop her back in the crate to continue sleeping until we get up in the morning.
The main issue we have left to deal with is that she hates being left alone. We’ve been leaving her in the house for an hour or two while we overlap our work schedules, but a video we took during this time shows that she’s basically crying and howling the whole time until she exhausts herself more than an hour later. Our dog trainer came over on Wednesday to help us out, and she advised that we need to stop leaving her on her own, until we can train her to cope with it without getting upset. Doing this means getting her used to being left alone for very brief periods, just a few seconds, and then very slowly increasing it. This training could take weeks or months, but we have to do it. So we’re exploring possibilities of adjusting working hours and recruiting friends, relatives, neighbours to sit her if necessary when we absolutely have to go out without her.