Thursday, March 24, 2011

Dog Litter

As you learned on Tuesday, Ike is litter trained.

Had you heard of litter training your dog before Tuesday’s post?  We hadn't heard of it until Nate’s sister tried it with her maltipoo…and it worked.

Today Ike and I will answer some common questions we get from friends and co-workers when they hear about this litter training business…get it, business…

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They make litter for dogs?:  Yes.  We use SecondNature by Purina. They make special dog litter boxes as well. (You can visit their website here for even more information.)

Where do you buy the litter/litter box?:  We get ours at PetSmart.  It’s about $20 for a bag that lasts about 2-3 weeks.

Is it like cat litter?:  No.  The litter is big pellets of paper and wood pulp products.

Does it smell?:  The litter has kind of a pine smell to it.  It’s definitely not strong though.  It doesn’t smell like cat litter does.  The box will smell if we don’t clean it out regularly..but that’s common sense. 

How often do you clean it?:  We clean his #2 out (I can’t believe I’m actually posting about dog crap..what is this blog coming to?) right away (with a poo bag). Otherwise we clean it out about every other day.  We use a cat litter scoop to clean out any wet areas.

Was it easy to train him?:  Yes. He had very little accidents as a puppy.  We kept him confined to our kitchen area and took him to the box about every 15 minutes.  He caught on in only a few days.

What are the pros of litter training your dog?: 
  • We are lazy so not having to take the dog outside is awesome.
  • He doesn’t have to go outside and get all muddy, snowy, etc. 
  • Did I mention that we are lazy.  In the morning we let him out of his cage (Nate is mean and won't let him sleep in the bed)...and he heads on down to use the facilities while we get ready for work.
  • He has one in his exercise pen that he stays in while we are at work.  We don’t have to worry about rushing home to make sure the poor dog doesn’t have an accident.  This makes him pretty self sufficient.
What are the cons of litter training your dog?: 
  • Sometimes he gets lazy and doesn’t like to go all of the way in the box…which leaves us with a mess. 
  • We have to lug a litter box when we travel.  (We do have a spare at my parents’ house). 
  • He doesn’t know how to tell us that he has to go if we are somewhere besides home.
    • Ike would like to take this time to apologize to his grandmother for last night's rug incident...Sorry!!
  • There is an ugly dog litter box in our mudroom.
Would you recommend litter training?:  Absolutely.  Best invention ever for dogs under $25 pounds!!

Any other questions?  We’ll answer them all!!

22 comments:

  1. I had never heard of dog litter. Our wire hair fox terrier is almost 9 years old. Luckily we have an invisible fence so I can send her out to do her business without having to go outside with her on cold mornings! Ike is adorable!! Our neighbors just got a wire hair puppy about 2 months ago...so cute!!!
    Jane

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  2. Wow! This seriously fascinates me. I've never heard of dog litter training.

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  3. we were using pads when we got our bichon puppy a year ago, but the vet was not impressed, and told us to take the puppy outside, unless we wanted him to *only* go inside.

    we'd heard such horror stories about housetraining bichons, we weren't willing to take any chances. So, we braved the rain and snow and mud with our fluffy white pup, it was *not* pretty! now that he is a big boy, he will go out in the (fenced) backyard by himself, rain or shine.

    I think the litter box is an intriguing idea, though, I'd never heard of that!

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  4. The Feens and I have to take three walks a day because S refuses to have dog poo in our yard. I think it's going to be a real stretch to ask him for a doggie litter box. Good thing our dog can't read and find out that such things exist. He'd never have to wait for me to finish blogging before taking him out again :)

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  5. How cool! Like I said before I've never seen this before so thanks for the overview! Not sure it would work for my x-large pups but I love learning something new!
    Dee Dee

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  6. With snow around the corner, I am so thinking of trying this with Charlie

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  7. Anything that lets you sleep in on a weekend winter morning is OK with me.

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  8. My Jack Russell (Derby) has been using a litter system since 1999 when I believe Purina started this system. It is truly the best set up .

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