Housetraining on Decks, Balconies,Terraces

[DantePugs]

Thought this might be worth sharing and useful for apartment dwelling Pug owners and maybe some other people....

I've been working a little bit lately with my friend Barry, who is a professional trainer. He got a request to train a Pug to do his business on the second story deck of a house. The owners are both elderly, and tiring of making 5 or so trips outside with their Pug in a high ranch home.

I had never seen this done before, and was pretty much amazed. We bought some short length green astroturf, a staple gun and a 16 foot lead.

We stapled an 8'x12' cut of astroturf to the deck floor, attached the lead to the collar of Buster, and gave the lead to the owner. Barry told the owner her job was to hold the leash all day, and when Buster showed signs of having to pee or poop, or when a scheduled time came up, the owner took Buster outside on the deck and led him to the astroturf.

The idea behind the lead is that already housetrained dogs trained to go outside generally won't poop or pee in such close proximity to their owner, so by preventing them from wandering off to leave a gift somewhere, and to keep an eye on them, you use the lead. The astroturf of course, is there to simulate grass.

Busters first trip outside was a bullseye....pooped right on the astroturf. 4 hours later, pee'd right on the astroturf. 3 trips total while we were there, all 3 successful as if the astroturf was really grass.

We left, and Barry relayed a call to me this evening that Buster has been flawlessly trained to use the astroturf. 5 days so far, and no misses.

Interestingly, Barry got this technique from a fellow trainer who has been using astroturf in a litter box to litter train small dogs for quite some time with great success...eventually replacing the astroturf in the litter box with wood chips or dog litter from specialty shops.

One thing which was funny about this whole thing was that Buster hasn't done the usual search for the perfect spot or figure 8's he did in the yard..He just goes on the astroturf, does his thing and voila!

And here I spent weeks and weeks training my Pugs to use our giant planter on the terrace

[Millie'sMichael]

Who says pugs aren't smart? We had an astroturf doormat outside the back door for a while, and Millie wouldn't step on it. After one time of trying to walk across it, she would jump from the stoop into the kitchen...right over the mat. I moved the mat before long, even though I did have to laugh every time I saw her in a quandry!

Dante, this may be a dumb question, but do the owners then hose off the astroturf? Or how do they get rid of the urine smell?

[Lemon]

Wow! It sure would be nice to have no waiting for our little Miss Finicky to circle and circle some mornings. Maybe I'll staple some astroturf to our yard.

[seya]

Speaking of funny places to go potty... you want to hear something hilarious? Mylo has been litter trained (in addition to outdoor training), and yesterday, he was upstairs with me while I was primping in the bathroom. Well, Mylo gets up onto my digital bathroom scale ... and I think, aww look, he's weighing himself! He's very careful about it, spends a lot of time making sure to get all his feet on the square scale at the same time, then he looks up at me.... and PEES!! lol It was just as if he was saying, "Look mommy! I found the litter up here, too!" ... I just laughed out loud, scooped him up and took him down to his "real" litter. The poor scamp... brand new litter, eh??? Hehehehe...

[PuddyLove]

That's so strange, I was going to ask if anybody did this!
We are going to be moving, and the place I feel in love with is in downtown Ft. Lauderdale. But it has very limited grassy areas, being that it is downtown.

Guess now I know...

[DantePugs]

I wonder Michael, if maybe Millie didn't like the crunchy sound of the astroturf? That must have been a funny sight to see!

Good question on the astroturf cleaning. These folks are going to hose it down, and being that the stuff is so inexpensive, they also plan to replace it monthly.

I still think velcro is the worlds greatest invention ever, but astroturf can be pretty handy it seems!

[Maryjo's Gang]

My boss has her two yorkies trained to pee and poop on her deck, because... (get this) her husband didn't want to have to repair the grass in the backyard! (Like she said, "No one even GOES in the backyard of their place, it isn't people friendly, they all use the front yard, that the dogs can't even get to!") *LOL* So she uses super-green to clean her deck every day.

[ruebella]

I am soo excited to see this post. Jamie and I are moving to a place with a big deck, and I often wondered if I could somehow convince the boys to do thier dirty work on it, and if so, how.

Thanks for the info. This one's getting printed out!

[bugs]

When we lived at our old place, It was on the second floor we had litter trained Jill but she loved to go out on the deck and go to the bath room, I couldnt tell her no I mean I would rather clean it up off the deck then on the carpet but now we moved and she has only messed on the deck once since we moved.