A few weeks back, we welcomed a new four-legged member to our family.

My husband had been looking for a new dog on Craiglist, on various Humane Society websites and on other online organizations, and we came across a 7-month-old Chihuahua on Craigslist we wanted to check out.

With two active children, we wanted a dog that was good-natured, young enough to still develop a lasting relationship with our family, and who would interact better with other people and other dogs than our former dog.

We packed our two children in the car, and headed south to Iowa Falls, where the dog lived that was listed.

After a little detour — thanks to the GPS on my phone — we arrived almost two hours later at the address provided on Craigslist.

We were greeted there by three energetic Chihuahuas, including the one we were interested in, who was named Tuffy. We soon found out that the people who owned Tuffy also had five or six 6-week-old Chihuahuas.

After several minutes playing with Tuffy and meeting the owners, we agreed to buy Tuffy — which is supposed to mean Tough Guy — and began the ride back home.

Tuffy — who doesn’t seem to quite fit up to his name — has been a great addition thus far, but needless to say, we are learning a lot about patience.

Everything has been going well except for one thing: house training.

I forgot how hard it is to house train a dog. It fact, it is kind of reminding me of our efforts to potty train our son.

For both, we are seeing minimal success. I’ve heard it’s often more about training the parent than it is about training the animal or the child.

In other words, especially at first, we must remember like clockwork to take the dog outside or when it comes to children, to sit the child on the toilet.

I’d be up for hearing about any tricks or suggestions in either category.

With Tuffy this week, we’ve had about a 50 percent success rate.

Sometimes he goes appropriately; other times it’s a test of my patience. We take him outside for 15 or 20 minutes at a time. No luck. We take him on walks. No luck.

We come back inside the house, and within five minutes, he has found somewhere to go. He has even gone in his cage.

Needless to say, we are looking for somewhere to take him for obedience training. I realize the house training issue is probably separate from that, but maybe some of these other dog owners have some good suggestions.

I am also looking forward to Albert Lea’s new dog park this summer, so we can try to get Tuffy out and interacting with more dogs and people.

In the meantime, for my sanity, if you have any tips, feel free to shoot me an email or give me a call. You can reach me at sarah.stultz@albertleatribune.com or 379-3433.

 

Sarah Stultz is the managing editor. Her column appears every Tuesday.