Murphy had an “ah-hah” moment today. I know because I witnessed it. First, a little background… The only issue we’ve had with him since day one (besides his tendency to eat TiVo remotes and alpaca yarn) has been that his previous owners never taught him a way to signal when he needed to go out.
When Molly was tiny, maybe 2 months old, we put up a bell on the doorknob. She learned very quickly that when she wanted to go out, she just had to ring the bell. Actually, she learned too well, and would just randomly ring the bell when she was bored and wanted to go eat grass. If we ignored her long enough, she’d knock the bell off of the doorknob and carry it into whatever room we were in. Eventually, we abandoned the bell in favor of just taking her out on a regular schedule.
When Murphy came along, he was still a relatively young pup. We took him out on a regular schedule, too, although much more often. He’d still have accidents…not too unexpected, since we really don’t know how long he lived in a house before he was abandoned. We decided to put the bell up again. The very first day, he rang it – I really thought we had a genius puppy – but from that point on he totally ignored it, despite our best efforts to use his paw or nose to ring the bell when we took him out.
This morning I took them out for their last potty trip before leaving for work. Murphy was much more interested in sniffing the leaves on the ground than anything else…you can lead a dog to grass, but you can’t make him…um… Anyway, I took them in, poured my coffee, and heard a little, tentative ring from the bell. Murphy was standing by the door, his nose to the bell! Long story short (well, not really), I took him out again, he did his business, and as we walked back into the house I’m pretty sure I saw the light bulb go on over his little doggy head!