Questions about poop...yep, poop??

[Patricia Walker]

Maci is now 12 weeks old and doing great with potty training.  The potty bell has worked amazing because I have two teenagers and it is easy for them to understand too ;)  She seems to be extremely picky on where to do her business.  She will smell the air, the ground, squat, move 6 inches, poop, move 6 inches, poop a little more and move 6 more inches and finish.  This makes clean up crazy.  I haven't been able to clean up with her so i always have to wait for her nap.  Hubby jokes and says I need to buy flags.  She also chooses a new area every other day.  We tried to keep her where we preferred and she will absolutely refuse to go.  Any ideas why she is so picky and why she keeps moving?  What I can do?

The other issue I have is rabbit poop.  Rabbits must be making our yard their bathroom and boy do they go.  I can't always see it, but Maci can find it right away.  It's impossible to clean it all up and we are probably going to have to put chicken wire or something under our privacy fence.  Any suggestions on how to make her lose interest?  She is always on leash outside and 100% supervised.

[Chantal & Oakley]

I sympathize with you Patricia. My Oakley is 12 weeks old now as well and the first few weeks at home is was frustrating waiting for him to pick the poop spot. What I ended up doing was using a retractable leash and only letting him go out as far I as wanted him to find the spot. He would struggle and try to get out of his collar but eventually gave up when the urge to go was too much. He didn't move around much once he started though so I'm not sure what to tell you about that. Have you dewormed her recently? Might be something with the sensation as she is going that is bothering her.

We don't have any rabbit poop around here yet, still covered in snow but my last dog ate it like no tomorrow. I had asked my vet about it in the past and was told not to worry about the dogs eating it. The more time Maci is back there, the less time the rabbits will be I suppose!

[Patricia Walker]

We are on our second retractable leash and it has been knotted twice because she can chew a hole in 2 seconds flat.  She seems to be so headstrong so I guess I need to be more headstrong ;)  She got a clean bill of health at the vet and no evidence of worms.  

We just started having our yard treated to get rid of weeds, clover and dandelions because I read that the rabbits love them.  I guess I'll take the rabbits over the snow.  We are originally from Northern PA.

[Lisa & Sunny]

Sunny is 10 weeks old and also likes to pick and choose where she poops.  My efforts to designate one area in the backyard as her potty place have been thwarted by my husband, who takes her out without a leash and lets her go wherever.  Recently she's narrowed it down to two favorite spots, so I suppose that is an improvement.  She usually just poops in one spot, though. 

Sunny finds all kinds of things to try and eat, from twigs and dried up leaves to dead earthworms and bird poop.  I'd really like to thank whoever dropped cigarette butts in our front yard near the street, because she tries to eat those as well.  It is frustrating, the amount of our time outdoors is spent trying to keep her from eating various things, but I guess that goes with the territory.

[Patricia Walker]

I believe hubby and kids might be part of the problem. I had her going against the back of the fence.

[EJ & Dante]

we thought we would have Dante go in our backyard, but it's actually easier for us to take him out the other door and walk him  to the side or behind our house.  We pick up immediately after he goes, and our backyard is poop and urine free as an added bonus. He is very picky about where he goes as well.  But he pees on command now, which is terribly handy before we head out in the car or in the cold.

[Patricia Walker]

Maci seems to believe the bags are all for fun. How the heck did I handle 3 kids under 4, but 1 puppy is kicking my butt!

[Lori, Winnie, Bob and Indie]

Both of my dogs have their own "style" of pooping. Winnie does what we call a "twirly girly"... she twirls and twirls and twirls- flinging 1 or 2 turds out as she does it before she finally crouches down to complete the job. Bob does his "walking poop"... he crouches down, starts to poop, and then walks off- pooping as he is walking! Both of them miraculously never step in their own poop. Sometimes they go to the same area of the yard, and sometimes they don't. (Now that they are adults I don't supervise them all the time- I let them out into the fenced yard. )

Yes, this all makes for interesting cleanup! We probably could have trained them to go in one spot,  but I'm a little more relaxed about it. I figure that they have a lot of other rules/boundaries that they adhere to in our household. So, if they get a little joy and freedom out of picking their own spot to drop a load, so be it! I'm not going to interfere by getting too anal (pun intended! Lol) about it! :-)