Brutus's New Trick

When we adopted Brutus, we were thrilled that he wasn't a "barker". Barking tends to make us crazy! The downfall, we never knew when he had to go to the bathroom. He would just stand there and look at us, and it took us a while to try and figure out a schedule for him, and even that didn't always work. He went from just staring at us to scratching at the door. It wasn't really bad scratching, considering what it could be, but none the less, it was leaving marks on the doors. So we purchased a set of Poochie Bells to hang on the door, and trained him how to hit the bells with his paw when he wanted to go outside. He picked up on the whole concept pretty quickly, which made us wish that we would have done it sooner rather than later.

These days Brutus is a champ at ringing the bells. He barely even touches the door. The problem you ask? When we were training him to go outside to go potty, we also trained him with the positive reinforcement of a treat for being such a good boy, as in NOT peeing in the house! Now that he's gotten to be a pro at going outside to go to the bathroom, the treat giving has lessened considerably. About a week ago, Brutus started ringing the bells to go outside much more often. I would let him out, but he would just go out on the top step, wait until I shut the door, turn around and then knock on the door to get in, walk over to the counter where we keep the treats and stand there. At first I didn't really "get it", but it continued and became blatantly obvious.

Brutus was now trying to train me.