Tux update

or, Lord, grant me patience...right NOW!

Tux is, and will be, a good dog. He's also had a hard six months of life. I think he might have belonged to a student--he was found in a very studential area of town. What is certain is that he was abandoned at four months old, and before that, he'd been abused. Not tormented: he still loves humans. But he cringes and cowers if you have to discipline him.

There are three problems I have. They are most emphatically MY problems and certainly not the dog's.
One is that I don't handle change very well. This is no big secret, but it does present issues when change comes stampeding into the house in the form of a Lab cross puppy. He really is much like a child would be: I feel like I have to be around him every second, especially since he is, quite understandably, anxious to the point of hysteria when I'm not.
Another problem of mine is that I have put absurd expectations on myself...and by extension, on Tux. I felt I'd be able to get him socialized--housetrained and calm in our absence--in less than a week. I felt, in fact, that I had to accomplish this, since on Monday we go back to work. I have extensive experience with obedience training on older dogs, but I've never started from scratch and chew before. So I'm also working from some degree of ignorance, which has never been my strong suit. As usual when I'm in this position, I've tried to research my way out of it. Sometimes there's a gulf between what I read and what I can do.
The thing with housetraining a puppy is that you have to catch it in the act of having an 'accident'. Even two minutes afterwards is no good...the dog would have no idea why you were so upset and you'd be doing much more harm than good disciplining him.
Of course, in order to excrete, you have to eat, and until this morning Tux has done precious little of that. Again, no big surprise: he's been in a pound for seven weeks. They feed their dogs whatever they can get--usually wet dog food, which is the canine equivalent of a strict McDonald's diet. Plus, he's stressed out beyond all belief, which has seriously disrupted his appetite. He's only now beginning to understand that those little brown crunchy things in his bowl are food.
One accident so far. Stupidly, I cleaned up the mess and threw the stool away. I should have put it outside. I got away with that one, though. Twice now, he's 'done his duty' outside. The book says not to consider him houstrained until he's succeeded at this for fifteen days straight.
We ain't got fifteen days...to catch him in the act sort of implies we have to be here. We go back to work Monday, which will undoubtedly raise his stress level. It's sure as hell raising mine.
That brings up the third issue, again mine alone.
Tux is an indoor dog. I've never had one. In the back of my mind I'd always considered it cruel to deny a dog, especially a big one--the space to run. Our dogs came indoors only when the weather was extreme.
I've had a bit of a change of brain on this issue. For one thing, I realized that while yes, our Shepherds were outside, they actually spent most of their time in a 15' by 4' kennel. Not too much room to run in there, is there? For another, the dogs of my childhood--for all their being outside--had no more companionship than Tux is going to get.
Shit washes off.
And most encouragingly, Tux has been by and large a very good dog. He definitely knows "NO" and "SIT", which gives me something to start from. He is starting to understand "COME"--that one takes a while. But it's made easier because Tux wants to be around me.
His first two nights, we shut him up in an unused room. After some scratching at the door and just one good BANG! and NO! from me, we didn't hear a peep out of him all night long. But he was like an unguided thermodogular missile in the morning. So last night, we put his blanket down on the floor on my side of our bed. MUCH better.
As of now, the last real hurdle is control when we're gone. We went to see a movie yesterday and came back to find the house had been ever so slightly ransacked. But progress is being made. I expect some backsliding in a couple of days...and I'll deal with it.