There is a seven-pound Chihuahua in my house that might not outlive Christmas.
When you have kids and animals, you're used to messes. You get used to puke, poo, pee, almost always in places you'd rather not have them.
I had an incontinent boxer. He had accidents. A LOT of accidents. But I couldn't get mad at him, heaven knows its not like he WANTED to dribble on his crate blanket every damn day. But here's the problem with male dogs -- the minute they smell that another dog has peed somewhere, dammit, they must pee there as well, to override the other dog's supremacy over that particular spot with their own spectacular supreme pee-premacy. When T-Bone first joined the house, he found a spot in my son's room that had been dribbled on by Hercules one night when he was sleeping in there. T-Bone promptly marked it, and its been a tug of war between him and me and my carpet shampooer ever since. I very nearly had the problem under control - and then we brought home the little dogs.
Gizmo seems to be on a mission to track down every single location in the house that has ever been peed on, by my dogs or any dog that has ever lived there since it was built in 1965, and cover it with pee. As if that's not enough, he thinks anything the kids leave on the floor must be peed on as well. I have HAD IT UP TO HERE with the peeing.
And then there's Tasha, who at seventeen precious years of age, MUST be let out the minute she knows she has to go, because otherwise she can't hold it. She's such a sweetheart, though. She is one of those dogs that seems to have a desperate need to lick your face. She knows better and she stops when she's corrected, but every so often we just have to let her fulfill her need to nurture. My daughter started a little song about the dogs: "Tasha's a kiss-er, Gizmo's a piss-er..."
With Tash we'll just do the best we can and forgive her for what she can't control. But that damn Gizmo is going into Doggy Boot Camp, pronto. I'M TURNING OFF THE FAUCET.
