Bouncing Bonnie pulls a new trick

"You can't teach an old dog new tricks" is not entirely true. But it does take patience and lots of common sense.

Patience because whether human or animal, getting someone to change when they have been doing it "their" way for years often requires lots of explanations for humans and lots of repetition for animals.

Common sense because for humans, you need to have a very good reason for changing their habits and for animals you have to have a very practical reason for changing anything, because you won't ever get them to understand why they have to change something you have already taught them or allowed them to do.

With animals, you need to make sure you are not asking more from them than their aging joints and metabolisms can cope with, but at some point with older animals, you might have to adjust what they do, or what you do, to take age into account.

After all, telling your 86-year-old grandpa that he needs to learn how to use a computer if he has only ever written you letters, does at least mean he can argue with you about it - your dog can't.

For Sassoon, 16-year-old ex-building site mongrel, we have had to take a number of issues into account where toileting is concerned. Her elderly bladder no longer wants to hold through the night, particularly in colder weather.

The simplest solution, particularly because she now needs help negotiating steps as well, was to use puppy-training methods and give her a disposable toilet (newspaper spread on the floor) in the utility room.

It took quite a while for her to realize that it was OK for her to use the temp toilet area and that it would be there when she needed it, night or day, when no one was around to let her out or help her up and down the steps on her more arthritic days.

What we hadn't planned on, however, was that Bonnie, the youthful (only nine years old) Pomeranian, would no sooner realize what was going on, than she appropriated Sassoon's personal toilet and instead of bouncing outside to go, would happily pee on the paper, then scrape with her paws to mark the space as hers and run away happily.

Georgina Noyce is an equestrian judge, and has a menagerie of adopted four-legged waifs and strays.

gnoyce2009@gmail.com