u/dmdaut

My girlfriend and I are about to move into a new apartment together, and she has a five-year-old italian greyhound she's had since she was a puppy. Our iggy is trained on pee pads, and we've been trying to transition her into more regularly going potty outside, but it's been a bit of a tough road. She's gotten better—especially about signaling to us when she needs to go outside to poop—but she still routinely pees on the pee pads while we're home and about 30% of the time will pee on the rug/carpet instead of the pee pad if we go out for the day and leave her at home.

My question is, because we're moving into a new apartment, is this potentially an opportunity to do a reset of sorts? Part of me is inclined to think that if we just don't use pee pads in the new place and really reinforce that outside is the place for potty, that might make a difference, but another part of me worries that we're just setting ourselves up for failure by trying to make too big a change too quickly.

I know that italian greyhounds are notoriously difficult when it comes to housebreaking, and that there will always be accidents, but we'd love to try to get her over the hump of potty training as much as possible. Another thing that could make a difference is that I work from home while my girlfriend goes into the office, so I'll be around to take our iggy outside during the day.

The way I see it, we have three potential approaches:

1. No more pee pads, cold turkey. Outside only for bathrooms.
2. Keep the pee pads for now and just try as much as possible to reward going potty outside.
3. A sort of hybrid approach where we don't use pee pads while the humans are home, but then have them available over night or if we're going to be out of the house for more than a couple hours.

Any thoughts/experience with similar training would be appreciated!

I am just about to move into a new apartment that has a balcony, but no outdoor outlets. I have a set of True-Tone LED Christmas lights that I would like to decorate with over the holidays, and I've been looking into adapters that fit into a light socket.

I found this product on Amazon that looks like it would best suit my needs, but I want to verify that it'll be safe to use. The light strands themselves only have two-prong plugs, but I use them with a meross smart plug that has a three-prong plug.

The adapter features a three-prong socket with an attached grounding wire (it seems like earlier versions of the product were sold without the grounding wire, but they've since addressed that issue). If I connect the adapter to ground, would it be safe to use with LED Christmas lights and a smart plug? Because the light strings themselves only use two prongs, is the grounding pin on the smart plug even a concern, or is it vestigial at that point?

Thanks!