A Pink Chin

Poor Kushi has diarrhea, and got a spoonful of Peptol Bismol. Half of it ended up on her face: Update 10/28: After a week, Kushi's diarrhea has finally gone away. It started after a certain someone (ahem) fed her some spicy mutton. Her diarrhea was so bad that she would poop wet puddles all over her grass sod outside on the balcony, and while I was busy cleaning up, she couldn't wait for me to finish and deposited another poop puddle on the carpet inside. Yaargh!!! By the way, I would highly recommend this product for cleaning up pet poop/pee/vomit accidents:

8 in 1 Complete Stain & Odor Remover Spray

We've tried many other brands (ahem, Nature's Miracle, Simple Solution), and this is the only product that does a reasonable job of cleaning up stains AND more importantly, removes the pee odor, as opposed to just masking the smell. It has a fairly strong citrus odor, and I would prefer no odor, but otherwise, it does a good job of getting rid of the pee smell.

After googling for how to deal with doggie diarrhea, we fasted her for 24 hours (but with free access to water). We initially tried to give her a spoonful of Peptol Bismol once a day, which did not seem to have any effect. It was difficult to get her to swallow the Peptol Bismol (see pic at top!), since we didn't have a syringe to feed it to her. Then we fed her exclusively half rations of her homemade supplement meals, skipping the kibble. I mixed in some plain canned pumpkin, which has a lot of fiber and suppposedly helps firm up the poop. I'm not sure how much it helped, but Kushi's poop soon looked/smelled like canned pumpkin. I also mixed in a spoonful of nonfat plain yogurt (with active cultures) every meal, and that seemed to help. Her poop steadily improved until it back to normal after a week. After a couple days of normal poop, we transitioned her back to her usual combination of kibble and homemade meals.

Kushi's new litter box

Up till now, Kushi has been using a 3 x 3 foot square of grass sod, which has worked well. The only problem is that if Kushi's poop is soft, then it will smear into the grass, making it difficult to wipe clean. Although we replace the sod every week, I'm still afraid that Kushi will track in invisible traces of poop.

So we finally got a litter box from PETaPOTTY:

Tigger and Kushi exploring the new box

It's about 34" x 34" and made of polyvinyl. Some absorbant medium such as grass sod, wood mulch, gravel, etc sits on top and there are slits in the box which allow draining into a collection tray hidden underneath. We chose to put wood chip mulch in the box and lined the bottom collection tray with puppy pads to absorb the urine that drains through the chips:

By using wood chips, I can pick up the poop and any surrounding dirty wood chips so I don't have to worry about any leftover poop residue. We also don't bother to change to wood chips as frequently as the grass sod. We just top off the wood chips and change out the puppy pads when they get too dirty. The only drawback is if your dog likes to dig, the wood chips will fly out and make a mess. You could always use grass sod or gravel as an alternative. Kushi was already used to going on wood chips, so she quickly adapted to using the box.

Falling off the poop wagon

Kushi fell off the wagon today, that is, the poop wagon. She hadn't had any accidents since she was 5 months old (almost two months till now). This morning, as usual, we fed her breakfast in her playpen, while we ate breakfast as well. We were watching TV, so we didn't notice when Kushi suddenly stopped eating halfway through her meal (if she stops eating before finishing her meal, then something definitely must be up). She started going poop in her playpen, which she had never done before, and we yelled at her to stop as we ran to her. Once it starts, though, it's way too late. She had even gone poop earlier in the morning. I think from now on, we will feed her after we are done eating, so I can better watch over her.

Also, she is trying out a brand of dog food called Timberwolf Ocean Blue, which is causing her to poop a lot more, both in quantity and number of times, than when she was eating Orijen Puppy. She poops first thing in the morning, twice during her morning walk, once or twice during her evening walk, and sometimes even at night. Others have also noted that their dogs also poop a lot more with the Timberwolf brand. On the other hand, she has not "scooted" her butt (i.e. anal glands full) on the ground since eating the Timberwolf, which she did when eating the Orijen. There is less calories/kg in the Timberwolf than the Orijen, so it's probably a matter of her just eating more Timberwolf to get the same amount of calories as in Orijen (which of course means more poop).

Crate training

So far, the crate training has been going well. Kushi hasn't had an accident in over a month. We got Kushi at 17 weeks, and her foster parents had been paper training her, but she would often have accidents. When we got her, we stopped the paper training, and instead put her into a plastic crate. The crate was just barely be big enough to allow her to stand and turn around, so that she would be less tempted to go potty in the far corner of a roomier crate. We also did not have any bedding inside the crate to also lessen the temptation to go pee. We found that a play pen also is an extremely helpful tool for potty training. A play pen gives your puppy room to play, but still allows you to keep an eagle eye on her. In the beginning, we took her out to her grass sod every hour, and now, she only needs to go every 2-4 hours. We would tell her "Go Potty" and as soon as she finished going, we would praise the heck out of her and give her a tasty treat. She usually poops after every meal (two meals a day), and once first thing in the morning. On average, she goes poop 3-4 times a day. She has a preference to go potty on grass, cedar chips, leaves and dirt, in that order. In the beginning, she's had a couple accidents (mostly due to my husband not paying enough attention, ahem), but after a couple weeks, she seemed to get the idea. We still don't allow her full free reign in the house, mainly because we want to take it slow, but she's well on her way there.

Using grass sod for potty training for apartments

I've tried using puppy pads (lying in a doggy litter pan) sitting outside on our balcony, but we've read that the pads might be too similar to carpet to a puppy. Also, unless you dispose of a puppy pad after each use (and I'm sure a lot of people have tried to use the same pad for multiple pees), the puppy will often track the wet pee from the pad. Puppies also often like to chew on the pad.

I finally switched to grass sod, and I've found that this works great! Kushi took to it immediately, and she learned that grass growing elsewhere is also good for going potty.

There are many websites which sell sod boxes, usually for an exorbitant price (~$200), but you don't need them. Just lay out a plastic tarp/sheeting and get a 3 x 3 foot worth of grass sod (e.g. at your local Home Depot), which will all cost less than $5, to put on top of the tarp.

I replace the grass once a week and very lightly sprinkle water over it once during the week. The grass is still fully green after a week, so I guess you could try extending it longer, but I prefer to replace it weekly to keep everything more sanitary.

The only drawbacks to using sod are that hauling around the sod is really heavy, and in warm weather, some flies will swarm over the grass (the flies disappear in the cooler weather).

Useful Tip: Babies versus Puppies

What is the difference between babies and puppies? Puppy stuff is much more expensive than baby stuff!!

Case in point:

PUPPY PLAY PEN $99.99 at petco.com

Now, replace the word PUPPY with BABY. Exact same play pen, same manufacturer. Just replace the picture of a puppy in a pen on the box cover with a picture of a baby in a pen:

BABY PLAY PEN $49.84 at walmart.com

Coincidence? How about another example:

100 "Paw wipes" $11.69 at petco.com80 "baby wipes" $2.79 at longs.com

I rest my case...so a useful tip is to get baby stuff instead of pet stuff if possible. This also applies to baby/pet gates.

By the way, I highly recommend the play pen shown above, it folds flat, and you can add or remove modules to expand or shrink the pen. Good for small dogs, though clever dogs may figure out how to climb out of it (good thing Kushi is not one of those types of dogs). Very useful tool for potty training.