Puppy Potty Training

After months of my then 9 year old begging, my husband and I conceded and decided to get her a puppy.  She wanted a dog so bad and we felt we were robbing her childhood of something potentially precious if we did not at least give it a try.  So we began to keep our eye out for a "good" one.  Then we saw this little guy and I must admit, I was smitten with his cuteness.  I mean, look at him......

I have heard it said that God purposely made baby animals cute so that we would be drawn to take care of them.  Well, it worked.  So I set out immediately to house break this little creature as quickly as possible.  I read up on the Internet for potty training strategies.  I posted a schedule and rules of the house to help our little guy, whom my daughter named Hershey, be successful in this venture.  From what I read on the Internet, this should take 2, 3 weeks tops.

Two or three weeks turned into two or three months and I started getting very frustrated. I am a very task oriented person, so the fact that I could not check "Housebreak Hershey" off my to do list made me feel like I failure.  What was I doing wrong?  Or perhaps there was something wrong with this particular dog that made him unable to understand what I wanted from him. Were we EVER going to have a housebroken dog?

About that time, my cousin who has experience with dogs, gave me a wonderful piece of advice.  He said, when you bring a puppy home, plan on the housebreaking to take about a year.  Doesn't seem like life changing words, but for me, it took the stress out of the situation and reset my mental state.  I no longer felt like a failure.  I changed my to do list entry from "Housebreak Hershey" to "Have Hershey housebroken within a year".  It was such a relief because I knew this unpleasant situation was going to come to an end at some point.  There was nothing "wrong" with me or Hershey. We will get through this and have a potty trained dog.

That simple statement, "plan on it taking a year", changed my perspective of what I assumed was my failure.  Jesus also told us to "plan on" something.  He told us to plan on His return.  Like my cousin, He even gave us a time frame--He said He would return "quickly".  I have wondered how could He say He would return "quickly" when its been thousands of years since He said that.  The reason is this; once He does return, all of our time on earth will seem like but a vapor in comparison to eternity.

2 Corinthians 2:17 says this, For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.

Do you know why women agree to get pregnant even though there will be much pain and discomfort?  Because they know they will only be miserable for no more than nine months and then it will be over.  Could you imagine if when you got pregnant you had no idea when, if ever, the baby will be ready to be born.  I don't think I could mentally handle that.  Knowing that the hard times will come to an end within a certain time frame helps us handle most anything. 

So Jesus told us to plan on His return and that He would come back quickly.  We can handle this life.  We can put our pain, discomfort, and perceived failures in the perspective of our eternity with Him.  Plan on Him coming back quickly.

It has been just over a year now since Hershey came into our home and I am happy to announce he is 99% housebroken and a wonderful addition to our family.