192. Motivating primary school students, a soldier and puppies

Toilet Training Your First Puppy in Singapore

"Do you give stars to motivate your primary four students to excel in studies?" I asked the teacher.

"No," he confirmed what other teachers told me. "The stars work only for primary one and two students."

"Then how to motivate them?" I asked.

"By making them compete against one another to be the best student."

"What if the students are not interested in studies?" I thought it was not that simple.

"There's nothing the teacher can do," he said. "It is the home environment."

What has this to do with the toilet training of puppies? The home environment counts a lot. This means the time spent by the owner and the owner's good knowledge of how to house-train a puppy or adult dog.

Motivation to do what you want them to is important. How to go about doing it depends on the age of the puppy and the owner being able to spend time training them.



I thank the teacher whose family operates a pet shop. I was there with my elder national service son who had been given an early check out this Friday and half a day's off. I had picked him up from his camp. He came with me as I had to give booster vaccinations to 4 Labrador Retrievers ath this pet shop and later on, we would have dinner with his career mum.

On the subject of motivation to achieve what one wants, I could not help thinking of what the teacher said about motivation and how the military had effectively applied the principles to my 19-year-old national serviceman.

The military knows what motivates some people like him to get the top physical fitness of soldiers. Top performancers get time off away from the camp. In his case, he was given a half day off yesterday and one hour early to book out of the camp on Friday because he was the "King of the Knoll." He came up first in a 20-km run and was given a gold medal with blue ribbons. What is a knoll? He probably thought parents do not know the meaning. "Well," he explained to mum later, I was "King of the hill."

A knoll is a small round hill. I don't know whether his mum knows or not but I knew what knoll meant. I was in national service 3 decades ago but the hills and physical exhaustion of military training had never been forgotten.

Time out from the confinement and routines of military camp life must be a highly motivating factor for him. The military uses this motivation to get the soldiers to excell in physical fitness. It works for some and not for others depending on their capability and motivation. So, it works for my son to be very competitive in running and obstacle course. Though the over-exertion might kill him and I hope he has some common sense not to go all out to get his asthmatic attack or heart failure.

Back to the teacher whose groomer rationed me to 4 name cards. I collect name cards from pet shops that had wanted me to vaccinate their puppies. I place the cards in my Surgery so that my dog clients can choose and pick them up if they want the services of groomers or pet shop operators. I note that some pet store operators are very miserly with giving away their cards to me.

"By the way, you should use a name-card software to print your pet shop's name cards." His groomer was very reluctant to give me more than 4 coloured name cards as they cost 0.30 cents per card. "The software is available at computer stores. You can print 10 cards in black and white using one thicker piece of paper and a laser printer. In this way, you do not have to worry about the high costs of getting a printer to do it.

It is hard to retail shops nowadays. I do not blame them for trying to save on costs. Qualifying who to give coloured name cards and restricting the number given is not a good idea to create awareness of one's services.