How to build an efficient pen to keep dog comfortable

Q: My son recently got a Labradoodle puppy. She is now 4 months old. He has had her since August. He just finished building a dog pen. It is large about 20 feet long. The problem is she won’t poop or pee in the pen, which is on a cement slab. She holds it till she is on the lawn. My son puts her poop in the pen to show her, no luck. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. — Daphne Winter, Las Vegas

A: Well it is obvious that she regards the pen as her home and she does not want to soil it. So the best thing to do would be to make part of her pen different from the rest of it so she does not feel like she is violating her instincts.

The best way to do this is to get some wooden garden ties that are used for creating borders around a lawn and nail them together to create a square in the pen about 4-by4 feet. Then fill the resulting square with pea gravel and sprinkle some grass clippings on top of the gravel to entice her.

Most likely she will use it right away and you can then scoop out the poop and hose out the gravel bed. All my dogs used such a setup and they would always gravitate off the lawn to pee or poop in their “dog toilet.”

Q: We have two parakeets — a male and female — and they have been together for three years now. I swear that they are in love with each other and their devotion is quite humbling. They never leave each other’s side and do everything together. I believe they love each other as we human beings do, but my husband thinks animals cannot love like humans do. What is your opinion on this topic? — Shira Goldstein, Chicago

A: This is a hot question, as love is not totally understood in humans, let alone in animals. I certainly am not qualified to answer such a question.

However, just about everything I learned about animals was from the works of the late scientist Konrad Lorenz, who won a Nobel Prize in 1973 for his work on the organization of social behavior in animals.

He kept many greylag geese and jackdaws and often said that some pairs had clearly fallen in love; other scientists took him as being too sentimental about this. His reply to the scientists was: “It is the accurate term for a real phenomenon for which there is no other name. I consider the term appropriate to any species, if that is in fact what they do.”

Q: We adopted a hound mix from a rescue group. They take care of the animal getting spayed and neutered. This dog is a sweetheart and just loves people. Though, he has one bad habit — he goes out of his way to mount our legs. Why would a neutered dog do this? I always thought that neutering removes these behaviors? — Annie Young, Allentown, Pennsylvania

A: Neutering a dog will remove all testosterone from its body, thus in theory all the behaviors associated with it. However, the timing of it determines the efficacy of the operation. The earlier it is done the greater the likelihood of success since the unwanted behaviors have yet to be established.

In your case, the dog was most likely neutered later in life, and so the mounting behavior he manifests is now a learned behavior and hard wired into his head.

The key here is to never give the dog the opportunity to do it. If he starts just get up and walk away or push him off quickly and with no drama.