Welcome to winter.

When Greyhounds arrive at a home, they are often on their good behavior.  It takes a couple weeks for the greyhound to get to comfortable enough in a house to let their actual personality come out. Mike has been here for a month now, and the weather has changed.  When Mike got here, he knew how to ask to go out.  After the weather changed, Mr. Mike has decided that peeing outside makes him cold, so instead he will just go #1 inside. He no longer asks to go out.

When this first started, I convinced myself it was because I wasn't noticing his request to go out.  Then, one morning, I found a puddle in the front hallway.  I figured he didn’t know how to wake us to let us know he had to go out.  Later that day, I found  another puddle after he had come in.  Instead of being  a responsible foster mom, I just complained about it as I cleaned it up.  The next morning, I got up and he had peed on the tile and carpet leading from our bedroom to the bathroom.  I of course was barefooted, so the carpet was squishy, and my sleeping brain didn’t recognize the issue.   As I took the next step onto the carpet, I stepped directly into the puddle of pee and before quickly realizing what "that was", my other wet foot stepped onto the tile and I went sliding across the floor, followed by Mikey wagging gleefully that I was out of bed.

He was introduced to a belly band after he went out and before breakfast that morning.  He lived in the belly band for 2 days without an accident.  He did not get to wear it while he was outside.  So far he has not gone #1 in the house since he was introduced to the belly band.  In case you don't know, a belly band fits around the dogs private parts, it velcros on at the top.  It contains a pad to catch the urine, and like a toddler being potty trained: it gets wet and they don't like that feeling.  Greyhounds learn pretty quickly not to go potty in the house with the help of a belly band.  I will keep him in the belly band at night till I am sure he can wake us up.

Today, he discovered the fun of deep snow.  While we have not had a lot of snow, we have some good drifts in the yard.  Macho was doing his trot around the yard, in the snow to find the perfect place to take care of doggie business, which meant he had to go through the snow.  Mike watched this with great attention and wagging.  I let him out and he layed in the snow and watched Macho, then, with all the enthusiasm of a puppy, jumped off the deck and into 1 foot of snow. He ran and ran, he ran his 3 laps. I do believe he had the best time of his life in the deep snow! Now he is a tired boy.