Ring the bell
Sundays are always tricky at our house because it is "everyone's day" to help the dog with what she needs, and that basically means all the children say "not me" for every single thing she needs.
There are six people in our family, so everyone has a "day" on which they are responsible to take care of Annie's needs. These basic needs include water, food, walks, picking up poop on the walks, and every time she rings the bell to go outside, that person is the one to respond. Six people and seven days leaves this Sunday dilemma every week.
Training her to ring a bell was one of the best and worst things we did. She caught on quite quickly, as we wanted her to have a signal for us when she needed to pee. We knew that she would probably ring the bell at other times , and we thought were up for that challenge. We didn't realize that ringing that bell would essentially become a daily game of "crying wolf" in our house. It's a catch-22 really; she rings it because we taught her to ring it, and when we think she's just trying to get outside to dig a hole or chase a squirrel we wish we hadn't taught her to ring it at all.
Today was Sunday, and Annie was on a mission to get outside all day long by ringing the bell over and over again and every time, because it wasn't anyone's "day" no one would move when that blasted bell was rung. It was a day where I wanted to send that bell back to Amazon and the dog back to Missouri where she came from.
I didn't do either, and tomorrow is another day.
There are six people in our family, so everyone has a "day" on which they are responsible to take care of Annie's needs. These basic needs include water, food, walks, picking up poop on the walks, and every time she rings the bell to go outside, that person is the one to respond. Six people and seven days leaves this Sunday dilemma every week.
Training her to ring a bell was one of the best and worst things we did. She caught on quite quickly, as we wanted her to have a signal for us when she needed to pee. We knew that she would probably ring the bell at other times , and we thought were up for that challenge. We didn't realize that ringing that bell would essentially become a daily game of "crying wolf" in our house. It's a catch-22 really; she rings it because we taught her to ring it, and when we think she's just trying to get outside to dig a hole or chase a squirrel we wish we hadn't taught her to ring it at all.
Today was Sunday, and Annie was on a mission to get outside all day long by ringing the bell over and over again and every time, because it wasn't anyone's "day" no one would move when that blasted bell was rung. It was a day where I wanted to send that bell back to Amazon and the dog back to Missouri where she came from.
I didn't do either, and tomorrow is another day.
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