Today, I am going to talk about a interesting yet somewhat frustrating topic. I am going to talk about what to do when a two-year-old Havanese still pooped everywhere at home. There are different cases that have happened to friends around me and I am going to explain each case briefly and provide you with a solution to fix the issue. The main purpose of writing this blog post is to help those of you who are owners of 2-year-old-or-older Havanese that still poops everywhere and give you frustration. Also, the most important thing is to ease your frustration by letting you know that you are all alone. All you need, like for many other things in life, is patience.
Case 1: The Havanese that Never Grows Up
One of the Havanese I know is a 2-year-old boy that never have been well-trained enough to go to the potty correctly. It is difficult to blame him. Not only that blaming is not useful at all, both the owner and Havanese shares the same responsibility. I would even argue that it is easily the owner’s responsibility if the Havanese isn’t well potty-trained. Anyway, blaming is not part of the game here. If you are one of those Havanese owners when didn’t spent enough effort and time to train your Havanese probably. Let’s start now and call this a new start.
Case 2: The Owner Takes the Havanese to Work and He Behaves Well Except When at Home
There is another roughly 2-year-old Havanese boy that goes to the office with his owner. He behaves very well and goes to the potty properly at the office. Only when he comes home, he likes to poop everywhere. In this case, it is actually neither the Havanese’s nor the owner’s fault. There is actually something very tricky and interesting going on. I will go a little deeper into how to solve the issue a little later.
Re-Train is the Simple but Not Easy Answer
No matter which case is more similar to your case, re-training your Havanese is the route to go if you are not looking for shortcuts. When you re-train, make sure you really properly potty-train your Havanese this time.
Tip #1: Make Sure the Potty Area is Far Away from Bed & Eating Area
You must define the potty area very clearly. The worst thing you can do is to make it very close to where the Havanese sleep or eat. That would confuse him.
Tip #2: Never Carry Your Havanese to the Potty & Make Him Walk
Even though your Havanese is so cute and light, you should never carry your Havanese to the potty area. Instead, guide your Havanese to walk to the potty. If you keep carrying your Havanese to the potty, your Havanese would be misled and would think that he shouldn’t have to walk to the potty or walking isn’t a part of the pooping process. That’s as bad a habit as your can let your Havanese develop. This is a point that a lot of owners have missed.
Tip #3: The Three Step Habit Building Loop
Re-training simply means that you are assuming today is day one and you start the training journey with a lot of patience. To training your Havanese is actually the same thing or at least similar things as to develop good habits for yourself. It involves a three-step loop: the trigger, the action and the reward. For this case, the trigger should be a voice command like “potty”. When you see your Havanese about to poop or you want to ask him to poop, say the word “potty” loudly and clearly and you may even want to repeat it for a few times to make sure your voice command is delivered. Then guide your Havanese to go to the potty area. You can gently push your Havanese towards the potty as a way to guide him. If he happens to poop and do everything right, gives him a dog biscuit as a reward.
More on Case 2: Havanese Behaves Well at Office but Not at Home
As mentioned a little earlier, I would dive a little deeper into this special situation. In the case where your Havanese behaves perfectly at the office but not so much at home. There could be the possibility that your Havanese has spent so much time in the office so he treats it at home. When he is at the real home, he though he is not at home and he is free to poop anywhere. In this case, just re-training them as mentioned earlier. The good news is that it won’t take long for your Havanese to relearn it because he already knows how to behave well. He just has to get used to the fact that he has two “homes”.
Looking Carefully at Your House for False Potty
Some Havanese like to poop at dark corners. They simply think that those dark corners are potties. If you see that there are those corners in your home, especially when you see your Havanese poop there sometime, you should get rid of them. How? There are two ways to do it, you can put some stuff there so it doesn’t look like a corner. Another way is to add some light to the corner so it is no longer dark.
Patience is the Key
I know that I have already mentioned patience earlier in this blog post, but I really want to stress this idea. Patience is really the single most important key for taking care and training a Havanese. In fact, having good patience can help you do a lot of things much better in life. Very often, I view the patience that I develop by taking care of the Havanese as a gift that the Havanese gives me. I always think that as much as you are taking care of your Havanese, your Havanese is making you a much better person. Patience is one quality it gives you. Being responsible and having grit are another two things that it can help you develop.
