Well, it's only been 9 days since we brought Gigi home (she's now 10 weeks old) but for a while there I thought I was going to lose my mind! Whew! We had set up a nice little enclosure using a fence I borrowed from my boss. It was attached to a small crate where we were planning on having her sleep and contained a nice big doggie litter box. Ha! She not only refused to use (or even notice!) that litter box, but once we put her little 9 week old body in there she immediately climbed right out over that 30" high fence! Gees!
So now we have installed a nice white giant "gate" (10 feet wide) across the opening between the dining room/kitchen and the living room. THAT she can't climb over because it's made of up and down pipes only -- no cross pieces for her to use as a ladder -- so although she does try hard when we leave her alone in there, she can't get out! . . . so far, anyway!
When she jumps up on it, she CAN, however, move the thing around! Fortunately, when it gets to the entry rug, it stops so she can't pee on the rug anyway! Gees!
She was also chewing on EVERYTHING including us initially! Ouch! And we had given her a dozen chew toys that barely made a difference. So John suggested we pick them all up and give her just one or two at a time so she would continually be happy to have something "new." Oh -- and to give her a rawhide chew toy (made in the U.S., NOT China). So Mark picked up a bunch of new things for her yesterday including that rawhide. Well, I'm telling you, she absolutely ADORES the rawhide. She chews it constantly and I sincerely hope that thing helps her lose her baby teeth and get her "real" teeth even sooner. I will be soooo glad when she stops chewing continually! (It's been almost 30 years since I bred Weimaraners. I had forgotten what puppies are like -- not to mention that Gigi is even more difficult to deal with than they were!)
But the big process at the moment is trying to teach her to wait to go outside before she poops since she won't use the puppy litter box! When we take her out, she immediately wets, but it's difficult to get her to poop outside. Unless we spend a long while just standing there waiting, she holds it in until she comes back inside and THEN goes on the kitchen floor. Sigh. Thank goodness the maids are coming this morning. They definitely need to do some serious cleaning on that kitchen floor! Because it's not a solid color, it's difficult to see every single thing that needs cleaned up. So maybe once the maids are gone and there's no longer any odor we can get more insistent on Gigi going outside after today. (Please, please, PLEASE stop raining!!!)
Well I hope we can! But I need to keep telling myself that she is now only 10 weeks old. SURELY we can get her house trained by the time she makes 4 months. Please, please, please let that happen!!!
Well, Mark is going back to work this evening so I'm going to have to deal with feeding the horses and cleaning up the stalls, giving Boo his meds and his prescription dog food, taking Gigi outside on a leash 5 or more times a day because there are red ant poisons put down in a number of areas in the dog yard and she might eat some if I were to just turn her out on her own. Whew! It's going to be a tough two weeks while he's gone this time. But I've talked to John and he has no problem with me working only 5 or 6 hours a day for this two weeks so that WILL help anyway.
On the plus side, I have gotten her registered with the International Cane Corso Registry. If you go to that web site, you will see that every single photo they have shows Cane Corsos with their ears cut off! But Gigi is NOT getting hers removed!
Oh - I've also gotten her insured. Hope she never has any "issues," but insurance is waaaay cheaper if you take it out while they're perfectly healthy and less than 12 weeks old, so now was the time. (Just having spent almost a thousand dollars on Boo this month, it seemed like a fine idea to insure Gigi, "just in case.")
No comments:
Post a Comment