7.02.2012

Dog fighting and potty training

Well, we came through the weekend mostly unscathed... I say mostly because some of us faired worse than others.

On Friday morning I was scheduled to start my new job. I waited for my mom to arrive to care for the boys, just like any other day, and then headed off to work. I hadn't reached the stop sign at the end of my street and I got a call from my mom. Her exact words were "I need you to come home! Lola bit Ike and there is blood everywhere!!!" I honestly thought she may have been over exaggerating. She most certainly was not.

Let me first remind you, Lola is our 18 pound Boston Terrier and Ike is our 90 pound German Shepherd. Every morning, Ike thinks it is acceptable to put Lola's head in his mouth playing with her. Well, I guess Friday she reached her breaking point and had had enough. My mom said she growled at him and he didnt stop so she snapped at him, apparently that wasnt enough to deter him and he tried to get her to play again. This time she snapped and got the end of his tail.

When I walked in the house it was utter chaos. Keating was standing there with blood sprayed on his clothes. There were blood droplets on the floor, on the kitchen cabinets, the walls, my church pew, the rug... basically it was everywhere. (My house looked like a crime scene from law and order. I hope our house is never examined with black lights, it would not be a pretty sight!) I quickly grabbed Ike and his rapidly swinging tail and brought him outside so I could assess the damage. His tail was too fluffy to see anything but it was bleeding pretty bad. (are you gagging with all of the blood talk yet??) I called Brad and told him he needed to rush home and get Ike to the vet because I couldn't get the bleeding to stop. In the mean time we scrubbed down the floors and walls, the children and our clothes to get the blood out.

Brad came home and went through our medical supplies to find gauze to bandage his tail with for the ride to the vet. I looked up at him from scrubbing the floor and he was holding one tiny square of gauze and a piece of medical tape. I laughed at him and said "Umm, what do you think you're going to do with that??" He said "Well I have to bandage up his tail..." I informed him that an old towel and ducktape would have been more appropriate! In his defense he hadn't yet seen Ike's tail, but one would think that the amount of blood we were scrubbing would have been a good hint.

The vet told Brad that Lola bit his tail just right, she nearly took the tip off. They put him under so that they could get it sewed up, and he woke up with a new satellite dish hat. I just thought that a 90lb German Shepherd puppy was a pain to have in the house... a 90lb puppy with a satellite dish is a disaster. Ike has hardly seemed bothered by his little injury... and do you think he learned his lesson from picking on Lola? Nope! He was gnawing on her head later that night.



The rest of the weekend was spent attempting to potty train Keating. We decided to go with the "Potty train in a day" method. Well let me just tell you that this is hogwash. At least it is for my kid. There is no such thing as potty training in a day!!! He was hyped up on Koolaid, I had prize buckets of candy and matchbox cars to encourage him, but he didn't care one way or the other. He is pretty apathetic to potty training. He only had three accidents, but most definitely was not potty trained in a day. The only reason he didn't have more accidents is because I tried to put him on the potty every 15 minutes. I think this is going to be a long and exhausting process. Tips? Pointers? Words of wisdom??


He did appreciate the candy prizes though... notice the many sippy cups in the background filled with Koolaid!




I did get a lot of projects done around the house since we were home bound for the weekend. I will share on those soon! (You can see the sneak peek of my new curtains in the background!)

It was a very long and tiring weekend for us. I need another weekend to recover from it!!


6 comments:

  1. Your little boy is too adorable! I have 2 Boston Terriers and the girl picks on the boy all the time. I'm surprised they haven't had it out yet. Ha!

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  2. I don't have a lot of advice from personal experience (my 2 year old still isn't trained b/c we had twins right before she turned 2...and I'm just not prepared for that battle yet!), but a lot of my friends had success with http://ohcrappottytraining.com/. She has a support forum and I've had friends that say she's answered their questions in less than 2 hours. Just a thought!

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  3. I was anxious to get my son potty trained too, but he has a mind of his own. No matter what we tried he wasn't doing it. We layed off for a while and all of a sudden he decided on his own he wanted to do it! Overnight, he had 'pottytrained' himself. I say wait for his lead, ends a lot of frustration. My little boy started around 32 months.

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  4. No kids of my own, but my mom used cheerios to help potty train my brother. Put a couple in the bowl and it gives them something to aim at/makes it a game. Hope everything works out!

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  5. honestly--wait until he's ready or you will be fighting a losing battle!! both of my boys were about 3 (I know your mom will kill me for telling you that)--Camden was easier than Evan. I did end up going cold turkey with Evan but only b/c I knew he was ready but just too much of a busy body to stop and go--if you wet your pants and then laugh at me--you are ready! ;)
    My pediatrician also told me to just wait. . .

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  6. i honestly would wait until he shows more interest. It will make it 10 times easier :)boys are typically harder to potty train than girls

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