Toilet Swimming
Lyra has taken up a new sport. It’s called “Swimming In the Toilet”.
It works like this. (Keep in mind there is some conjecture here, since I’ve never actually witnessed this).
Lyra takes a bone and sits down for a chew. Then she waits until I’m distracted, at which time she takes the bone to the bathroom and drops it into the toilet. Next, she attempts to remove the bone from the toilet, digging violently in the bowl until she has removed all of the water from the bowl and covered the floor with it. She leaves the bone for me to remove at a later time.
Lyra is not the first dog in my house to take up a toilet sport. When Juno was young she also thought it was great fun to remove the water from the toilet; the key difference is that Juno screams when she does it, so I can come running and prevent the full catastrophe. Lyra is silent.
Lyra’s addition of the toy to the bowl is pure genius, since my kids are not likely to pay any attention and next thing we’ll have a plumber at the house to remove the bone and whatever else gets stuck with it. I can’t wait.
I could close the toilet seat. This action would prevent the toilet swimming and I would no longer be mopping the floor on a daily basis, however…. I also have human children. I have been pleased to see these children lift the toilet seat in recent months rather than peeing indiscriminately all over the place. Closing the toilet lid upon completion of bathroom activity is probably asking too much now that they have just learned to open it.
Lyra has another favored activity. She climbs on top of the bookcase to pull down my son’s stuffies. I’m not completely sure how she does this, but I know that I have been carefully putting the stuffies up, and then ten minutes later they are down again. A few days ago I got a glimpse of her methods when I saw her stretched between the back of a couch (which is she is not allowed on) and a middle shelf on the bookcase. It has crossed my mind that we may not be far from finding stuffies in the toilet. My human child will not be pleased.
If I catch Lyra toilet swimming, we will have a discussion. It will not be motivational.
17 comments
When my husband and I got our first puppy I found that training hubby was much harder than training the puppy! We ended up putting auto-hinges on the closet door because hubby could not remember to close the door and the pup would go in and remove the foam inserts from his runners and eat them, then poop blue foam for days. :(( Auto-hinges meant shoes and puppy were safe! :))
I have a self-closing baby gate in the bathroom doorway to keep the dog out, since we keep the cat’s litterbox in there.
Don’t think that you will be able to stop her by leaving the seat down. My girl just walks in and flips the lid back up whenever she wants a drink. I should probably get one of those waterfall bowls as she is uninterested in drinking from any other source.
Denise…it took me a LONG time to train my teenage boy (13 yr old) to lift the toilet seat. I find it way easier to train my dog NOT to do something :)
ROFLMAO! I don’t have toilet water diggers but I have had adolescent dogs perform the toilet roll end grab and run manoeuver. My setter prefers the toilet bowl water to any water bowls we have in the house, including the $42 electric doggie water fountain (yes, I did!). So we often have wet toilet seat and slippery tile floors due to drooly drinky mouth. I have also recently had my 2 year old human child discover the joys of grabbing the end of the toilet roll and running throughout the house. And he’s now quite interesting in flushing things. Like the end of the toilet roll so that you can watch the toilet roll unroll on its own AND watch it flush. Double fun! We go through a lot of toilet paper. Sooooo what we do now is keep the doors closed to all the bathrooms. And the door to my son’s room is closed when I can remember to, as it cuts down on the number of disembowelled stuffies. My dogs are 8 and 5 and they still enjoy a good stuffie disembowellment.