Biggest thing is to get rid of the smell, if you don't clean it up properly and there is any kind of remaining odour (remember dogs smell is many times more sensitive than yours) then they will continue to pee inside. You need to use an enzyme based product anything else is just pointless.
Getting them into a routine is also really important, easiest way to do this is to keep strict meal times. You can also get pee-posts which are a pole you stick in the grass outside that emit an odour that the dogs want to mark their scent over. (I've never used these but heard they are good).
I doubt you can clean that spare bed well enough for it not to attract him to it anymore if he has pee'd on it a few times already, just throw out the mattress and get a new one. He was probably just trying to mark his scent over the last person that slept in it, especially if it wasn't a regular member of the household.
going back to the routine part after he has eaten give him 15 mins then take him outside and stay with him until he pees it might take an hour or so the first time but once he starts peeing say 'toilet' then when he finishes give him lots of praise and a treat. After a while the time you have to wait with him will reduce and you'll just be able to let him outside say toilet and he'll run off and do his business.
It sounds like you don't tell him off when he does pee inside, thats a good thing actually. Unless you actually catch him in the act you can't tell him off, dogs live in the moment if you don't literally catch him doing it he won't have a clue what your telling him off for. If you can catch him doing it then making a loud noise is the best way to stop him, loud hand clapping should do the trick.

You should be able to tell when he needs the toilet he will start sniffing around, he will likely often leave whatever room you are in as well so keeping him confined to whatever room you are in if possible is a good way to keep an eye on him and when you see him starting to sniff the ground take him outside immediately and don't let him back in till he goes.

Depending on how bad its been you may want to get your carpets professionally steam cleaned to get rid of remnant odours.

If you can't be ****ed with all this then you can always buy an indoor dog loo, google 'pet loo'. I have used one before with my first husky the only thing is you have to clean it often and thats pretty gross but depending on how big your dog is that might be your best option.

Lastly the little guy is only 7 months old it's not unusual for them to still make occasional mistakes at that age, my Samoyed was still making the odd mistake at 8-9 months.

CLIFFS -
Buy enzyme based product to get rid of smell
Build a regular routine using meal times as the focus
Throw out mattress and get new one
Don't tell him off unless you catch him in the act and gove him tons of praise when he does go outside


LAZY OPTION -
buy indoor pet loo

Beautiful dogs sparky. Also, +1 on the steam cleaning the carpets. Just bought a rental property and the tenants got the carpets steam cleaned and it brought up smells of animal urine from a previous owner and we had to get all the floors in the basement replaced. If you got them cleaned early I would imagine this would prevent this type of thing from happening

I dont know if you guys know, but tomahawk/cruise missiles had pin point accuracy 20 years ago. Other people called rocket scientists know exactly how to send a projectile to a near exact location even to intersect a second object in a 3-dimensional environment. Its just all a matter of having a rocket ready that you can calibrate at a moments notice to send it whatever distance/direction. I would imagine it could take a few practice runs, but the technology is all there.


Also, Dyson spheres are not impossible to build. The amount of matter in a single star would be enough material to create something like that and heavy stars have loads of metals. Obviously this is hundreds/thousands of years away, but your just that person in the 1500s that cant imagine how a TV would ever be possible.

yeah bro.... that's why US army invented the expression "collateral damage" in the mean time.
i guess the civilians that exploded during the past 20 years around the world can rest in peace now that you well established that they were genuine militar targets.

I dont know about the specifics of how many cruise missiles have missed their intended targets, but apparently you do. If you want to prove me wrong at least show a source or some tiny amount of knowledge of the subject.

Has it ever occurred to you that the US military likes to shoot at anything that resembles a terrorist? I'm assuming most of this "collateral damage" you speak of isnt instrument error but just a trigger happy sgt joe shmoe. Obviously mortars land all over the place, but guided missiles with modern control systems dont miss their intended targets very often.

If you dont believe this technology exists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_system), just look up how the space shuttle landed (except the times it vaporized) or how a radar guided missile shoots down a plane.

The Dyson sphere is actually a broad class of different hypothetical megastructures. You seem to be talking about the Dyson shell, which I happen to agree is kind of out there. I think a Dyson swarm is far more plausible. When aliens want to colonize our solar system, that's what they're going to send their self-replicating bots to build. The mass of the Earth, asteroids, and other inner planets could be converted to small orbital habitats that, in total, present a far larger total surface area to the Sun and, therefore, capture a much greater amount of the Sun's energy output per kilogram of material used. It would also create millions of times as much livable space for organisms to occupy. The solar system could house trillions or quadrillions of occupants instead of mere billions on the surfaces of planetary bodies.

When it comes to us building something like that (as opposed to the aliens who take possession of our solar system building it), I think it is going to be a long time before it happens. Like I said, probably at least 1,000 years. If you consider the Kardashev scale, then a civilization housed in a Dyson swarm and effectively using all of a star's energy would be a Type II civilization. At present, we are not even a Type I civilization (we're about a type 0.72 civilization), and will not achieve Type I status for another 100-200 years; Type II status is hypothesized to come in "a few thousand years." I'm optimistic though so I think it can be done in a 1,000 or so years.

Anyway, as for making do with Earth, I don't think that's a viable longterm option. The energy required to fuel our increasingly advanced and complex society and technology, and the resources and space to back said energy production will require us to move beyond our planet and out into the solar system, and eventually beyond. Maybe not in our lifetimes though, and definitely not in our lifetimes if we get smashed by an asteroid first.

It's not entirely clear that rockets would be sufficient to deal with asteroids. It's possible they could work for certain types of asteroids, but it may take a more robust defense system already in orbit that uses methods beyond explosives to give us a real shot of defending ourselves. That and many, many hours of data collection on what's out there.

They would be fine for ones similar in size to the one that just missed us. The Bruce Willis Armageddon Texas sized asteroid is obv another story.

Sparky thanks for the kind words about physic teachers and wanting me on the board. I'll do my best and not be a lurker. And very nice dogs by the way!

Nick, very interesting post about Dyson spheres. I hadn't even heard the term before but I read up a bit and I think the idea to be very sound and logical. The sun is what generates all our energy directly or indirectly. Even fossil fuels are essentially stored solar energy. So a very advanced civilization would naturally turn towards the direct source and try to maximize the output. Unless of course fusion power could be generated directly. If this was the case which I think to be quite reasonable I don't see why one would care for solar energy when one had their own "sun" directly on the planet.

Anyway all of the above is like you say thousands of years in the future and if man kind can't overcome this first big energy hurdle (replacing fossil fuels) I don't see humans coming that far anyway.

The chief advantage of the Sun is that it is a much larger fusion generator than we could possibly make for ourselves. Terrestrial fusion generation could power us now and on into the near future, but it's unclear if it would produce sufficient power for us several centuries from now. Our energy needs will most likely continue to grow as we unlock new technologies that require more power to function. It's likely that by then we will have moved on to superior power sources anyway, such as antimatter power generation, which generates over 100 times as much energy per gram of fuel as fusion (or about 10,000,000 times the energy per gram of fossil fuels). Consider that about 1.2 kg of antimatter would be the equivalent of the Tsar Bomba. Beyond that? Who knows. But, regardless of what means of energy production we develop in the next millennium, it seems to me that the Sun will still be very useful as a gigantic battery to power civilization at the day to day level.

Anyway, for your reading pleasure.
I guess we'll know about the fossil fuels thing soon enough.

sparks thanks for the advices, what about if he gets somethin in his eye, like a piece of dust or other irretant, any secret to flushing a dogs eye?

Their eyes function the same as ours if they get something in it they will blink a ton and their eyes will water to get it out. I'm not sure if I quite get what you mean?
what breed do you have?

we went out for a walk ans it was windy, when we came in he was pawing his eye (stil is) and it looks a bit puffy/closed. he a ShiChon

You should take him to the vet and get it checked out, if he has an infection the quicker you get it checked out the better. Some breeds are very prone to ear/eye infections and I don't know anything specific about that breed so don't really wanna give any advice.

thoughts on 'toys for kids thread' again this year? I feel like its not gonna be very easy to do cos of BF?? perhaps just a thread with links to different organisations from each major country?

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson was doing a well on reddit today. I immediately thought of this thread when he answered this question.

kPat93
What do you prefer NASA to explore more of?

neiltyson
Asteroids that might one day hit us.

APOPHIS!!!! thats the only one we should be remotely worried about in our lifetime and/or near future iirc.

when I worked at the campus bookstore in college I ran the booth at a talk and book signing he did. The talk was really interesting and funny and he seemed like a really nice guy. Also probably the coolest astrophysicist ever. Thought it was neat when he got a cameo on Big Bang Theory last year.

OMG Sick dog!! Congrats sparky. I'm looking for new addition to my pack too!!

what is the toys for kids thread?

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/11...thread-928759/

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/11...thread-936385/

I'd be happy to run the US one again this year. I also got a letter recently from the Toys for Tots organization again thanking us for our support last year and asking us to think of them again this holiday season.

editing this because eff it I've got enough cash to do it and still match 30%. Last year I think I ended up going closer to 40-45% of the total, and I might not be able to do that but I can definitely do the 30% of the total assuming we don't raise like 10k.

I'm guessing we will raise less this year than last, so what about just doing it for U.S. and canada? If there is enough interest to do it for Australia as well I'd be happy to organise that but I'm not sure how much interest there will be?

I'lldonate againfor sure if youdo it. And it doesnt matter if its US,UK, Canada or whatever. As long as I know themoney is going to presents for children that need them.

+1