Coco the Happy Pup Loves His Crate

Coco Sleeps a Lot

The first night Coco was with us, he peed all over the Florida room.  He’d never spent the night inside a house, so he had no reason to control himself.  Fortunately for us, we had a big bottle of Nature’s Miracle ready and the floor is made of concrete.  So we had a big clean up, but this stuff neutralizes the smell of anything.  It’s amazing.

We put Coco in a crate we used for training Toby, that has a “wall” of sorts that can be positioned so that the pup has only enough room to lie down, but not enough to eliminate in one corner and sleep in another.  Dogs won’t do their business where they eat and sleep unless they are sick and can’t control their processes.  So that’s what we did with Coco, even though he was pretty big when he arrived in our home.  This crate is HUGE, and he might have found it reasonable to mess it up before morning.

We woke up and immediately took Coco out to the back yard.  He hiked his leg next to a palm tree for must have been a minute.  That’s good.  The first hurdle was overcome.  He held it for awhile; a long while for an untrained bulldog.

Bully breeds are not known for their self-control, and don’t take to well to housebreaking, but there are tactics that work on them, beginning with patience.  The first is like with any breed:  take him out every two hours when he is indoors, and he remains in the crate at all times when he is inside.  This works well, but don’t get too flummoxed if it takes some time to accomplish.  From my experience, bully breeds are somewhat emotional and Coco even now will tinkle on the floor, occasionally, when I arrive home and he’s turning himself inside out to get my attention.

A puddle on the floor kind of takes the fun out of seeing his clown make-up face, but after all that work with him, it is a lot better than the Johnstown flood we got those first few weeks.