Puppy-training at eleven below

It is almost 7 a.m.  I am starting to wake up.  That is, I've been awake for hours but I am only now starting to feel awake.

They call it "puppy amnesia," that forgetting of all the difficult details of owning a small young dog--the nipping, the house-peeing, the bouncing, the chewing, the screaming (Angus can go up the stairs, but not down, and when he gets to the top, he hollers), and the house-breaking. Oh, the house-breaking. Oh, the middle of the night house breaking at eleven degrees below zero.

When you house-break a dog, essentially this is what you do:

You buy a crate, and you put the dog inside. It has soft bedding, and a couple of toys, and he comes to learn that it is his shelter. (You hope: This never happened with Riley.) This is where he sleeps, and this is where he spends his downtime, and this is where you put him when you leave the house and don't want him roaming free.

When you let him out of the crate, the first thing you do is go outside so he can relieve himself.  I don't care if you're cold. I don't care if it's windy and snowy and the temperature hasn't been above zero in five days. You go outside.  Yes, you are insane for getting a puppy in early January but that is not the point right now. The point is, you go outside.

If he doesn't do his business, you put him back in his crate and wait a few minutes, and then you go outside again.

This works pretty well. Over time, it works very well, but when they are still just small, as Angus is, there are still a few screw-ups.  But mostly he does his business outside; I think he understands he's supposed to pee in the yard but he doesn't yet understand he's also not supposed to pee in the house.

Overnight, you haul the bulky crate up the stairs, bump bump bump, and put it in the bedroom, and he sleeps there. He sleeps there until, oh, about 11 p.m. or midnight, and then he starts chirping. You throw back the covers and find your slippers and open the crate and (this is important) carry him downstairs because if you just let him out and expect him to follow you, he might instead pee.

You unlock the back door, with its balky, tight lock, all while holding a squirming increasingly fat puppy in the other hand, and then you open the door and gosh dang almighty that midnight air is brisk!

The stars are bright and the moon is huge and you glance at the tree where the owl was on Christmas Day, just to make sure it isn't waiting there to carry off your dog, and then you go out and stand in the snow.

At 2:30 or 3 a.m., you do this again.

But here is the upside to puppy training in early January: The dog has few distractions. Sure, there's the occasional stray twig or dry leaf, but mostly there is just endless icy white, and that wind, and that refrigerated air, and when he is done with his midnight pee he races back up the stairs and sits by the door, so ready to go back to his warm bed.

Him and you both.