It was a kind of accidental experiment. Accidental in that I didn’t purposefully set it up that way. Experiment in that, what I thought was true was ‘proved’.

Piero is a really good dog in many ways. OK but he’s a puppy so the chewing of a piece of furniture in the hallway is not unexpected. Fortunately, it’s not an important piece of furniture. It was given to me FOC and is more utilitarian than nice. It doesn’t fit with my other furniture, for certain.

The getting on the bed seems to have stopped since I moved all the little things on the bedside table to a place well out of reach.

When we go out for a walk, he nearly always does a pee within a hundred yeards of the front door of the building. He nearly always does a pooh on the first bit of grass/stony area where cars park.

Sometimes the pee is very long. Sometimes short. Sometimes the pooh is huge, sometimes small. The small/short ones happen if he has already peed or poohed in the house.

But, I KNOW he doesn’t NEED to do them, since, when we were away, he does nothing at all in the house, even if we’ve left him all day. So, in general, I know he can hold it. And my thought was that, even if I don’t put paper down any more, he still thinks it is ‘acceptable’ to do his toilet in that one place.

And, last night, with a friend sleeping in the lounge and them with me in the bedroom, I had proof that this is a psycological thing for Piero.

When I got up this morning, there was no pooh or pee to clear up whereas, if he had had access to the lounge, there defintely would have been.

Now I know it’s a psycological thing, I have to find a way to stop him thinking that this area is a toilet.

But it’s a big step forward.