Maci Nitti: The Formative Days

You know, courtesy of a faulty Nitti gene pool stretching back generations, it's extremely possible my children will be neither bright, athletic, nor particularly attractive. That being the case, Lauren and I have quickly made peace with the fact that our puppy Maci is the best opportunity we will ever have to play the role of annoying, overbearing, "my kid is the greatest" Little League parents.

So along those lines, here's Maci at a shade over 11 weeks, exhibiting her stunning repertoire of mastered trickery. The sit, the paw, the lay down, and the ultimate crowd-pleaser, the roll over.


Pretty neat, huh? We'll, you ain't seen nothing yet. Maci was potty-trained by 10 weeks. However, Lauren and I were concerned that the layout of our townhome would serve as an obstacle to Maci's future development. You see, we have steep stairs leading down to our back door, which makes it difficult for Maci to let us know when she's got to take care of business.

The solution?

Lauren came up with the brilliant idea of hanging a bell from the back door knob. For a full day, every time we took Maci outside to pee or poop, we would brush her nose on the bell on the way out the door, followed by some exuberant encouragement.

By the next day, she had figured out the bell=poop connection. Which leads us to where we are now...


I've gotta' say, I find this rather impressive at her stage of development. It has bought us a great deal of freedom; we can now leave Maci out of her crate to explore the house, knowing that when nature calls, she'll break away from whatever she's doing, walk down the stairs, and give the bell a little ring. Heck, I've even seen her leave the middle of her dinner, run downstairs, ring the bell, poop, and promptly return to her kibble without breaking stride. (Editors note: in this video, Maci was just awakening from a 2-hour nap. She struggles to get moving, much like her mother.)

It's times like these, I'm pretty confident we have a genius on our hands.

Other times, not so much...