Potty training a puppy is not usually presented as a pleasant experience. But it turned out to be quite a rewarding experience for me when I potty trained my four-month-old Golden Retriever, Simona. To be completely honest, the pup didn’t become my dog ​​under the best of circumstances. My brother, Wilfried, had been with Simona for a few days when a car accident tragically ended my brother’s life… The family wondered for a while what we would do with Simona, and my father suggested they give him the puppy. a kennel. However, my mother would not allow it. She insisted that it was not what Wilfried would have wanted and she practically begged me to take the puppy. I tried to explain that she had never had pets for me because she didn’t want to take responsibility, but it’s awfully hard to say no to a crying mother. So I ended up inheriting the responsibility of potty training a puppy I really didn’t want to accept and had no idea how to care for.

I did some reading on how to potty train a puppy and learned that you should walk a dog fifteen minutes after being fed in the morning and at night. So the first morning Simona spent with me, I fed her, grabbed a bag in anticipation of the mess the pup would make, put her on a leash, and took her for a walk in the nearby park. I expected Simona to take about twenty minutes to take care of her business, but to my frustration, after half an hour of walking through the park, Simona had already urinated but had not yet pooped. I was growing impatient because I wanted to sneak in a quick workout at the gym before I left for work, but I didn’t want Simona to greet me when she got home. Irritated, I started yelling at the helpless pup, “Go potty Simona! Five more minutes. You don’t go potty and you stay outside until I get home!” Certainly potty training a puppy was not a good start for me.

My first attempt at potty training a puppy was about to fail when suddenly I heard a female voice saying something to me. Taken by surprise, I did not understand what was said. I then quickly turned around and saw a woman standing in front of me. She was about my age, curly blonde hair and all, with a poodle on the end of the leash that she held in her right hand. Flustered, all I could say was, “What?” Noticing that she had started, she chuckled a bit and explained, “I said you shouldn’t yell at your dog like that. She won’t be able to go to the bathroom if someone stresses her about it.” Embarrassed, I explained that it was her first time potty training a puppy and that she didn’t know how to deal with Simona not going potty when she was supposed to.

“Oh, your first time…” the woman echoed me as she smiled. “My name is Ginny, by the way. Ella. Maybe she can help you.” And so, on that fateful day, a friendship was formed, based on a puppy.

It turned out that potty training a puppy was something Ginny had quite a bit of experience with. The poodle she was walking, Maria, was actually her second dog (the first had died of old age), and Ginny had successfully potty trained them. She informed me that patience was a must in potty training. “Yelling at your pup will only make him nervous and prevent him from going to the bathroom like she normally would. He’ll go on his own time, then when he does, reward him with lots of praise,” she explained. In fact, Ginny was so helpful that she offered to walk our dogs with me every morning and every night. That went on for six weeks, and before she knew it, Simona was completely tamed. The task I thought impossible, potty training a puppy, had been accomplished with just a little bit of effort.

The success with puppy potty training I experienced is now fifteen months old, but Ginny and I have continued to walk our dogs together almost every day since we met. The truth is that we have been seeing each other often outside of our daily walks with our canines. In fact, we are engaged and will be married in four months. No, I definitely can’t deny that potty training a puppy has its benefits, some expected and some totally unexpected.