::A Geek in Korea::

We’ve recently started letting our dog into the house at nights. It’s been too cold to keep him on the veranda, so we had been putting him in the cage we bought for him two years ago. He hates being in that cage, and will shake and rattle the cage for an hour after we make him go to bed. Since he is a pretty well behaved dog, we’re also letting him stick around the house while we were out of the apartment.

He’s been trained to go to the bathroom on the veranda, as well as in his cage. He doesn’t make mistakes while we are home, but we can’t open the veranda door while we go outside now that it’s too cold.  We’ve moved his second toilet into our second bathroom this week so that we don’t have to clean the floor of his cage all the time. He sleeps on our couch, and is there in the morning when we wake up. He’s got his little niche and doesn’t do anything to disturb us, so there is no reason not to let him out during the evening.

Part of his good behavior in the house is dependent on him getting walks in the morning, or before we go to sleep at night. As long as I give him a walk, he doesn’t need to use the bathroom the rest of the time he’s unsupervised in the house. He lives up to his part of the deal on the walk, and I let him stay in the apartment, out of the cage, when I’m not watching him.

Today, I got Yoshi ready for his walk. He got shaved last weekend, so he’s been wearing a hooded winter sweater. It’s been too cold for him to go outside without it. I had him walking around the apartment block so that he can do his thing. We took a walk to the pet store for food. We walked around the park. We walked around the apartment. And again. And again…We paced around the apartment ten or more times.

Nothing.

It was getting late, so I had to leave for work. I couldn’t let him into the entire house if he ran around and made a mess. Keeping him into the cage while I left for work seemed like a stressful situation for him. I decided to let him out in my computer room, but not in the entire house. He might spend the entire afternoon in the room and not do anything but sleep. He might make a huge mess and get punished when my wife returns home. She told me to put him in the cage and be done with the risk. I’m hoping he won’t regress to that.

I’ll be home late tonight, and I don’t really want to take him on another walk if I don’t absolutely have to. The temperature is finally getting cold enough that a late night walk requires me to bundle up to not freeze on our way around. If he just got his stuff done normally, there’d be none of this wondering if he had left me a present or not when I get home. I’m not as bothered by all of it as my wife is, and if he made a mess she had to clean up, he’s in big trouble.

I don’t know if the cold weather has affected him somehow, but I can’t go walking around for an hour every morning when it’s getting colder every day.