Pavlov’s Curveball

Luna is a bullet train in dog form. When she has “zoomies”, her footsteps can be heard pounding the ground outside and racing at top speed. She does everything hard and fast; eating food or licking a face. It’s all the same.

Recently, she changed a pattern, that ultimately caused me to adjust a nightly habit. At the end of each night, Luna goes out one final time to the backyard for a bathroom trip. When she comes in, I give her a treat. Somewhere along the way, she decided it was taking too long to get to that snack so she started faking the trip.

She goes out, gets as far as the deck comes back in quick, gets her treat then has to go back out for a real bathroom trip. It’s something I was beginning to call “twosies”. While it was incredibly cute, it was also taking longer to go to sleep.

The last couple of days I’ve tweaked the parameters of our nightly routine and so far it’s working. I tell her okay it’s that time of the night. She runs up to the back door, expecting me to open it. I walk up to the door and instead hand her the treat first. She plops down in front of the door and eats it.

I then open the door and let her go out. She has already eaten what was expected. The only thing left is a bathroom trip. She goes out, does what she needs to do and comes in. The “twosies” are gone. Giving her that pre-emptive treat is kind of strange but by removing the rush to get it, our dog can focus on a final potty break, then bedtime.