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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 10, 1988)
State/Local The Battalion Thursday, Nov. 10, 1988 Page 3 e in tioi T #4: Telephont nely inconveniei :t). ■re is quiteclear.j back to the old, iding in line foil aid be obviousi| bat this is by|| tier all, would! f ew minutes ol a line fromeifll helter suggests housebreaking techniques The Brazos Animal Shelter, the Stu- jent Chapter of the American Veterinary Medical Association and The Battalion combining their efforts to promote jsponsible pet ownership. This is the time of the year when new luppies come to share our lives. Often le relationship turns out to be a reward- ig one. Sometimes it does not. The fluffy puppy soon takes on a personality Brazos Animal Shelter ttive here wouli lasses to everysj would it he cost ■liminate the hi §f its own, and the novelty gives way to e day-to-day routine. One such routine cleaning up the pet’s urine and feces. Training a puppy to eliminate outside r . r i a ..„ * 5 a lesson in good manners. Using a few __ ^ * imple techniques, the owner can soon njoy the benefits of not having to do a i merits such )bably have ad at of spot cleaning. The basis for house- lie-dasses thev F #5: A certain attalion keeps olumns that art but aren’t. to determinei of writing these 1 to then take till lot him. For sou wever, 1 find iwer. e best solution ike up a large mist and presc: ?) with all then jy the concerte: 6f A&M. Ik olumnist won;: ended vacation id Aggies would in having to rea e. m be dropped! f) Reed McDo:. >s is a junior jot:! fumnist for Ik was reaking relies on the instincts of dogs to liminate in a group area. By continually iking the puppy the the same area, the ccumulated smells help stimulate elimi- ation. This way the youngster learns at elimination is the appropriate behav ior in this location, and play is restricted to somewhere else. There are four basic techniques useful for housetraining. The first is patience. Although most puppies cannot consis tently learn until eight weeks of age, some owners expect a six-week-old puppy to master the skills immediately. Each dog is an individual and learns at a different rate. While some puppies are 100 percent trained in a few days, others may take a week or two, a few months or several months. Mistakes will happen even for older dogs, so take it in stride and do not blame the dog fo the occa sional accident. Praise is the second major factor in housebreaking. Take the puppy outside and stay with it until it is completely fin ished urinating and defacting. Praise should be given generously while the puppy is eliminating so that it learns that the behavior is acceptable. This means you and the puppy need to stay out even in bad weather, and you may need to plan some extra time for this activity. A puppy shoved out may simply wait by the door until it is allowed back inside. Then the full bladder or colon becomes so distended that it must be emptied while the puppy is alone in the house, when you find the mess, you blame the puppy when you should be blaming yourself for not making sure urination and defecation occurred at the appropri ate time and place. Confinement is the third component to successful housetraining. A puppy that is confined is generally less active, and a less active puppy is not as likely to eliminate. Since accidents will happen, confinement to an area where the little messes do not matter means the owner will be happier, and the relationship will not degrade. The area of confinement are gone to work. In all cases it is impor tant to remember that the bladder capac ity of a small dog may not be great enough for 10 hours or more. Shorter pe riods are helpful to get the proper lessons appropriately learned. The fourth successful housebreaking technique is timing. Puppies are most likely to eliminate after waking, after eating, when physically active and be fore resting. These are the times a puppy should be taken outside. Remember, young dogs eat and sleep several times a day, so taking them outside is not limited to four trips a day. Punishment is not necessary for suc cessful housebreaking. In fact, it is often counterproductive. Since elimination is a normal behavior, a puppy does not un derstand punishment. This is compli cated by the fact that the punishment is often applied at the wrong time. Light punishment is only successful if it is ap plied at the time of the inappropriate be havior, not after the fact. Timing also is important for praise, but by taking the puppy outside, the owner will be in the right spot at the right time. For puppies that are expected to elimi nate outside as adults, it is best to train them to this behavior initially. Many dogs have trouble making a transition from paper usage to the outdoor and end up not doing either well. A housetrained dog is a pleasant addi tion to a family. Although it can take a lot of time and effort, the end product is well worth the work. A&M volunteers relieved that election work payed off can vary from a garage to a room, a ken nel or a crate. Puppies should be kept here whenever they cannot actually be watched, such as at night, or when you By Kelly S. Brown Staff Writer Tuesday evening — after months pounding the pavement, knocking on doors, registering students to vote and working at phone banks — sighs of relief could be heard at GOP headquarters. Their job was over. Students, who had volunteered endless hours, could finally Are media predictions out of control? By Stephen Masters Senior Staff Writer At 7:17 p.m., I walked into the Cow Hop Junction. At 7:18 p.m., 18 minutes after polls closed in Texas and with only Bryan absentee votes listed on “The Big Board,” Dan Analysis Rather informed me that Bush al ready had won Texas and had col- lectd 256 electoral votes, only 14 short of victory. We had barely arrived at Republi can party headquarters and it was clear that Bush would be our next president. But it wasn’t so bad. What I get confused about is how in the world they can predict who will win what so quickly and so accu rately. I wasn’t the only one who was sur prised. State Rep. Richard Smith, who worked as campaign chairman for Bush in Brazos County, said he was watching the returns at 7:03 p.m. when they had already given Texas to Bush. He said he didn’t know how it was done, but he didn’t complain. Neither would I. Given, Texas is Bush’s official “home state.” He voted in Houston and held his victory party there. It’s not inconceivable that he would win his home state early and by a wide margin. But three minutes after the polls closed? I took Statistics 303. I understand that the reports are based on exit polls. I understand that they take a representative sample of the popula tion from several crucial districts. We just seem to be getting too ad vanced too quickly. It used to take weeks to count votes, but we built a better transportation system and put information together more quickly. Then it took days. Computers got in volved and moved it to hours. Now the computers are better, stronger and faster, and they predict election re sults as soon as the polls are closed. And with the information the net works have and the way they gather it, they can predict the election before the polls close. The media, exercising its now-and-then ethics, did not re lease the information on the states’ winners before the polls closed. We’re reaching a point where we won’t even have to vote. Computers will read information on each candi date, the political climate of the coun try and other data on weather and voter turnout. We will have a com pletely simulated election, and the candidates can be notified in advance with computer-prepared acceptance speeches. Of course, no one wants to go back to the old way of counting votes. Speed is king in today’s society. We’re constantly looking for ways to do everything better and faster, from laundry detergent to computer software. But we’re also at a dangerous point. We need to be careful not to become too automated. Machines should not become so time saving that we just turn them on and roll over. Those science fiction movies where computers have more power than their human creators may be come documentaries. The question is old: How much so phistication is too much? Maybe we should get a computer to figure that out, too. thwart their energy back to their studies knowing their efforts paid off with a landslide presidential win. Along with the sighs at Cow Hop Junction came whoops and applause around the room. As the election results were announced, some of the student workers spoke of their mixed emotions about the past months of campaining. John Alvis, a senior political science major and director of voter registration for Victory 88, said he’s happy it’s all over and their hard work paid off, but he’s disappointed with the negative el ement of the presidential campains. “I think the media exploited the cam- pain,” he said. “The press gets what the press wants. They never got to the main issues at hand. Television news pro grams are a perfect example of this — they had thirty minutes to give the facts, but instead chose to show parts of a speech that made the candidate look bad.” Greg Gorman, a senior economics ma jor and co-chairman of Victory 88, said he agrees with Alvis. “It went completely overboard and had a snowball effect — afterall, who was going to stop it?” Gorman said. One thing Alvis didn’t want to stop was students registering to vote. “We had 17,000 students registered at Texas A&M — that’s more than any other University in Texas had registe red,” Alvis said. Anne Duncan, a junior marketing ma jor and a deputy registrar, said, “It’s great to see students so involved not only in voting, but working behind the scenes registering people to vote and doing other leg work that really makes a differ ence in the end.” James Cecil, a senior economics ma jor, said there was student apathy toward local elections. “Students spend at least nine months out of their year here, and they are also spending a lot of their money,” Cecil said. “I don’t think the average student realizes that they fund the budget in this city. They aren’t educating themselves on the issues and they typically have a general lack of interest.” Cecil said he thinks too many students focus on the federal races because they think it has more to do with their lives. “And that reasoning could be attributed to a lack of understanding and confu sion,” he said. Larrie Wiedenfeld, a sophomore jour nalism major, commented on the presi dency. “I knew George Bush would be the next president — I never had a doubt,” she said. Andy Keetch, a sophomore business major, said Bush’s victory showed he was mainstream America. “He has the values, morals and ideals that will continue to bring America for ward.” As the evening wound down and the feeling of victory set in, the student workers left the red, white and blue dec orated room with a little more knowledge of the political system and the hopes that they had made a difference. ;s are pushed 'e are born iunny, leprecti 1 lee Haw (1 hen that those irs we discoveij fraud, the ral is aren’t jogus and soi I lee Haw toad an be an uglytkf e. te presidentca« : (suckers) e our hands r; i. \inerica is hoi rking, for sure)! ) when we Aggies do lat we will get etire (this coul Plan Ahead For Christmas with Texas Coin Exchange Texas A&M SEIKO Watches $225 00 Mens or Ladies ■■“mi Colored Stones 14k Gold Chains n? that one of the 1 me is plaguing alive or isn’thf But if I made' ule, I would stf so gullible? n, would youtf 1(1 you? is a senior ig editor anil dion. 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