Coco by the Numbers
February 6th, 2008
My life with Coco is proceeding quite nicely, despite her lack of housebreakery. She’s a stubborn one, like all the females in the house.
Here are some numbers:
Number of times I take her out to pee a day: 76
Number of times she actually pees: 8
Number of urine-based accidents per day (average): 1
Number of fecal based accidents per day: .02
Number of times she’s really excited to see me, even though I just left the room to get something or do something and came back in: 53
Teeth lost: 0
Number of times I’ve been peed on: 1
Number of times a day she whines and we shush her: 1,200,864
Size she thinks her bladder is:
Actual size of her bladder:
We’re getting there with the housebreaking. Slowly. o
Tags: dog, housebreaking, puppy
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February 6th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
too cute! love the imagery with the watermelon & the pea
i think my cat imagines those two things too, but more in relation to the size of her human owners’ brains. 
February 6th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
um, in the opposite order of course, in appropriate cat fashion. yeah, my connection just totally backfired. NEXT!
February 6th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
All these tribulations with Coco are God’s way of punishing you for being surrounded by more than your fair share of “cute”. Count yourself as one of the fortunate ones. I’ll bet He still has a few hundred million locusts at the ready…and the frogs, my Heavens, if He cuts them loose to have their way with you you’ll be begging to tip toe through Coco Crap.
Give Chuck and Coco an ear scritch from a fan who still has no clue what the hell a box elder looks like. Is there such a thing or did the Chamber of Commerce in Brigham City make that up because they got screwed out of having any birch trees on the mountain?
Hey, I have an idea. Let’s give Heather and Leta a break. We’ll get a six pack of Killian’s and hike up to the B on Saturday. Hell, we can take Coco…after that climb she’ll have to pee and poop too…it does run roll downhill after all.
February 6th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Try this:
Buy fresh chicken livers at the grocery and stick them in a pan with enough water to cover them. Bring them to a simmer and let them stay there for a good 20 minutes or until they firm up. (It’s okay if they are still pink inside as long as they are firm to the touch.)
Drain the water and let sit on a paper towel until dry. Then, throw them in a rubbermade container and feed Coco a bite, showing her which container they are in and then put them in the fridge.
Next time you take her out, grab that container and make loud smacking noises about how good those livers are going to be after she’s been a good girl. Take her out and DO NOT give her a single bite until she goes and then IMMEDIATELY break open the container and let her have a big old bite. Praise, praise, praise and talk up the liver!
Take the container back inside and store it back in the fridge and ONLY take it out for going outside. I potty trained my dog in THREE days with this and now all it takes is for me to smile and say “Good girl” and she’s happy as a clam. No more liver is necessary…except to let her know I love her on occasion.
February 6th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Oh I love my dog dearly but reading this post makes me realize how much I DON’T miss training him to be some what civilized! Just be thankful that the number of times you’ve been peed on isn’t in the double digits…
February 6th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
AHHHHH. the joys.
i remember it well and without a glimmer of fondness.
she is cute but.
peace.
Ngaire
In Brisbane Australia
ps.. HOPING that you are all feeling better and that good health has found your resisdence once more.
February 6th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
I know this is unrelated but if you don’t know if you’ve caught http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=collection%3Aetree%20AND%20creator%3A%22Ryan%20Adams%22&page=3
lots of live Ryan Adams shows!!
enjoy
P.S - Coco is such a cutie
February 6th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
Is cute running your household?
http://www.cesarmillaninc.com/tips/quick_insight.php
Stop the madness!
February 6th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
We adopted two yellow lab-mix sisters from the local animal shelter around the first of November and I am just now confident that they are house-broken. So it takes about three months to get it completely lodged into their brains that defecation and urination are outside activities only (plus I don’t think they can completely grasp the concept of right and wrong until 6 months of age.)
So hang in there. She’s a smart girl. She will get it soon. (And it is so relaxing when they do. You no longer have to jump up everytime they make a move.)
February 6th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
the housebreakery can be such a pain in the ass. luckily her severe cuteness makes me up for any accidents, at least i imagine it must. because her cuteness…it just kills me.
February 6th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
HA I love this!
February 6th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
We got a puppy at Thanksgiving and we’re STILL training her. We also took her out of the snow for a mini vacation this past week. She took one look at the beach and was like “dude, where do I pee?”
Also just want to say that God made puppies so cute so that you don’t kill them.
February 6th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
So .. that’s a poop (in the house) every 5 days? not too bad …lol..
I remember my rhodesian as a pup - everytime she peed outside, I would say “go pee pee, Kia” (or go ca-ca). This proved to extremely usefull as it wasn’t before long that she did pee on command, and made the whole process so much easier.
LOVE hearing about these stories of your pup .. sooooo refreshing! Thanks!
February 6th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
i thought i would put in my two cents. We got a puppy at 12 weeks and have only had two pee pee accidents and no poopies. What worked for us besides taking him out every 20 minutes, is attatching a bell to the main door where we let him out. Each time we took him out we would ring the bell with his paw or nose. By the second day he was doing it by himself.
If i weren’t such a wimp i would follow him outside and give him a command while he pee pees but the snow here is too much plus it is hard to do with a 18 month old in the house. My last dog pee pee and poo on command and in the same spot.
good luck with your Coco.
February 6th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Well, I hope you have $$$ in depends stock because the main subject of this post made me do a bit in my jeans.
Shut up with the funny already!
Coco is cute squared
February 7th, 2008 at 3:09 am
We used to have a totally brainless dog that peed herself whenever she got excited, long after she was ‘trained’! Every time we came back in after she’d been left on her own at all she’d be so excited to see us that she’d rush up the hall wagging her entire back end, and peeing as she ran! We’d be yelling, “Stop it! Stop peeing, you stupid dog!” and she’d be all, “Yes, I love you, too!”
February 7th, 2008 at 6:05 am
priceless
February 7th, 2008 at 7:11 am
She’s still freaking cute.
February 7th, 2008 at 9:29 am
i got josh the dog as an adult, so i missed all this.
i’m not unhappy about it either.
sure, i never got the puppy breath and the big goofy feet and all the joy that comes with that, but i also never had to carpet my home with newspaper.
good luck with the housebreaking. and she seems well worth the effort.
February 7th, 2008 at 10:23 am
I found that it helps to crate-train a puppy; dogs will not go in the spot where they have to sleep, so a crate that is just big enough for Coco to curl up and sleep, maybe shift around a little, is just right. We put my dog in a crate and put it next to our bed every night. It’s the easiest way to teach a dog to learn how to hold its bowels.
Also, when taking Ari out, I found that telling her “hurry up…no hurry up, no hurry up” until she finally does her business, and then praising her with a treat and pettings made her more obedient. It sucks when it’s cold out, but my dog is my little buddy, so if she has to suffer, so do I–so out I go into the cold with her.
February 7th, 2008 at 10:26 am
“Number of times she’s really excited to see me, even though I just left the room to get something or do something and came back in: 53″…. makes all the rest worthwhile, no?
February 8th, 2008 at 6:39 am
LOVE IT! Nice morning laugh! Isn’t Chuck teaching her anything?
February 8th, 2008 at 10:22 am
To Elaine in the UK:
Your dog was not brainless, she was submissive. Dogs that pee upon greeting or being scolded are being submissive. It is not a good behavior and needs to be changed, but it’s not because of inability to hold their pee or because they don’t understand to go outside. Submissive peeing is a totally different reason and needs to be handled differently than housebreaking.
Just to be helpful, I googled submissive peeing and came up with this page of helpful links:
http://www.dogplay.com/Behavior/peeing.html
(Didn’t meant to hijack the thread, Jon!)
February 8th, 2008 at 10:26 am
You just know Chuck is rolling his eyes at all these goings-on. We have a yellow lab who still does the pee-pee wiggle every time you come home so the minute the door opens we ole’ her out the door. After a couple of “hurry up and go pee-pees,” she squats for a millisecond, does her biz and runs back to knock us over. It seems like it takes so long when you’re doing it, just like with kids, but once it’s over you kinda forget how tough it was.
And my 20-year-old daughter always called the precocious eyebrows springing out above their eyes “fireworks” when she was little. Of course, she also used magic markers to make designs on the white parts of her tuxedo cat to decorate her for each holiday.