I read all of the best puppy housebreaking books on the market before I brought our first Cairn Terrier, Molly May, into our home in March 2004. I thought I had it all figured out, but Molly's personality turned out to be "not the norm" in regard to how all of the books advised.

"I like getting brushed. It makes me feel pretty, and once a month I get a treat they call Heartguard when I'm being brushed. Cool!"   Molly May I now know that Molly is in fact what the experts call a dominate female Cairn Terrier. She is what I call a girl with an attitude and a bit of a tomboy. She wants to be boss or alpha dog. She often lifts her leg to pee, marks her territory during walks and is somewhat of a bully when it comes to our other pets. She has a petite stature so it's rather comical to see her try to force Happy Jack into submissiveness when he outweighs her by almost 8 pounds.

Molly is extremely smart and was super easy to train with other dog training commands. Housebreaking was her biggest roadblock. She did not care about positive praise, toys, or treats when I was trying to housebreak her. All she wanted to do was do whatever she wanted and when she wanted. At first I thought perhaps she had hearing problems or was a male. But that wasn't the case.

Molly is of course now housebroken and has been for many months (she is now 2 years and 4 months old as I write this article). It took far longer than I expected or the books said it would take. It was partly my fault due to my ignorance of her sense of smell, which I explain in more detail in a related article, "Nature's Miracle". Until we brought home our second Cairn Terrier, Happy Jack, however, I thought I was a failure at housebreaking. I just couldn't imagine what I was doing wrong.

Since Molly does have a dominate personality though, she will on rare occasion purposely urinate in the house when she wants to tell me she does not want to do something I am asking her to do. This has only happened twice in the last year when she was being put into her crate and we were leaving without her for awhile. In my opinion she knows how to push my buttons. Needless to say, it did shock me after a year or more of being accident free, but she did not get her way. To date she has not tried that tactic again.