Let’s paint a picture. You are traveling, it’s pouring rain, or you are navigating public access from a wheelchair. The last thing you want to do is spend forty-five minutes wandering around a rest stop waiting for your service dog to find the perfect blade of grass to use the bathroom.
Enter the holy grail of assistance dog skills: Teaching your dog to go potty on command.
In theory, the protocol is elegant. You walk outside on a short leash, deploy your cue word—mine is “Better Hurry!”—and stand entirely still. No pacing. No playing. You act like a human statue. When the dog finally does the deed, you throw an absolute, red-carpet, high-value-treat party.
In reality? When your service dog is an orange toy poodle named Sunday who sports bright purple hair, the “Better Hurry” stand-off looks less like elite training and more like a bizarre psychological thriller.
When “Just Stand There” Becomes a Mind Game
Sunday is entirely housebroken. She knows the rules of civilized society. So, when I snapped her leash on, marched her outside into the yard, muttered “Better Hurry,” and then locked my limbs into stone… Sunday was deeply, profoundly offended.
To a brilliant toy poodle, a handler who suddenly stops moving and refuses to look away is not a training cue. It’s an anomaly. It’s an emergency. Instead of sniffing out a patch of grass, Sunday immediately launched her own counter-protocol:
- The Standing Stare-Down: She reared up onto her hind legs, perfectly balancing like a tiny, neon-colored circus bear.
- The Turnaround Twist: She spun 180 degrees in mid-air, assuming that perhaps my eyes were broken and I simply needed a different angle of her face.
- The Launch: Convinced that I had suffered a catastrophic medical event that paralyzed me from the waist down, she jumped straight onto my legs, frantically checking for signs of life.
And there I stood. A grown adult, on a short leash, silently staring into space while a bright orange-and-purple creature aggressively parkoured off my shins. To my neighbors, I looked like I had lost my mind. To Sunday, I was an unyielding wall of weirdness.
Why Every Traveling Team Needs a “Better Hurry” Command
Despite Sunday’s initial attempts to snap me out of my training trance, the “Better Hurry” method is a non-negotiable tool for the working dog lifestyle.
If you are traveling through crowded airports, staying in pet-friendly hotels, or handling a dog from a wheelchair during a thunderstorm, you cannot afford the luxury of a 20-minute sniff-safari. You need a dog that understands that when the leash is short and the cue is spoken, it is time to clock in, do the business, and get back to work.
How to Survive Your Own Potty Party
If you want to train your own team to go potty on command without getting bullied by your poodle, keep these gold-standard assistance dog rules in mind:
- Be More Boring Than the Grass: Do not walk around. Do not talk to them. If you move, you turn potty time into a walk. Stand still.
- The Cue Happens Once: Do not repeat “Better Hurry” like a broken record, or the words will turn into white noise. Say it once when you hit the grass.
- Throw a Metaphorical Gala: The exact second Sunday stopped bouncing off my knees, sighed, and actually used the bathroom, the statue came alive. We had a party. Praise, high-value treats, and total release from the leash.
Eventually, the penny dropped. Sunday realized that the faster she “hurried,” the faster her weird handler turned back into a normal human who gives out snacks.
It might look ridiculous to the outside world, but when you’re staying dry in the middle of a travel day while other handlers are soaked to the bone, you’ll be glad you stood your ground.
