Jocks' first night home

Even though Jock was born and bred outside, I have a problem with putting my pups outside. Having been brought up with smooth coated dogs that didn't cope too well outside (along with the prospect of having the dogs stolen) meant that all of my dogs live inside, usually in their own pen.
Don't get me wrong, my dogs are only penned at night. They are usually free to wander the house, however most of the time they chose to sit in their pen and watch the goings on around them.

So, Jock was introduced to his new pen. It's an old dog show trolley, usually used for holding 4 or 5 small to medium sized dogs to get them from car to ringside. Given the size of Jock when I bought him home, and the size of the pen, I could have fitted him with all of his littermates in this pen and still have room for more.

Bedded down on some baby blankets and an old t-shirt that had my smell on it, he settled in for the night. I expected him to whine at least for a little while, but instead he just curled up and went to sleep. He did whine at about 4am, which saw me stagger out of bed to let him out to go to the toilet.
This was when I inadvertently started teaching him to pee on command. It is cold here at night, and here I was standing in my dressing gown in the middle of the paddock, pup on the lead and the torch waiting for this pup to stop sniffing and start peeing. After about 3 minutes of this, I was turning a brighter shade of blue than my dressing gown. Shivering, I said -"Jock, go pee" and he did just that, he squatted down and pee'd. Okay, so it was a fluke that I said it that moment before he found the perfect spot, but it worked. A quick 'good boy' whilst he was peeing and it started his training to pee on command.

Now, at 7 months of age, I can say to him "go pee" and he'll do just that, usually within 30 seconds of me giving the command. A very valuable lesson, especially if I know we have a long car trip ahead of us, and I don't want to have to stop 30 minutes up the road to let him out to pee.

Peeing now done with, I  popped him back in his pen, giving the command "pen" and he settled down to sleep until the household woke up about 4 hours later.

His first night home, although it would have been a bit lonely for him, proved uneventful, and set the scene for just about every night since then.

He really was being a well-behaved little pup.