The Dog Picks His Spot

Some old bananas, a mango that’s getting ripe, yogurt, almond milk, a baggie of strawberries I froze last summer, an ice cube of wheatgrass juice, and a few mandarins to squeeze…time to make some smoothie! Only one problem: the dog freaks out every time we use a vacuum cleaner or blender.

He’s a great dog, but some things scare him. We don’t know what his life was like before we adopted him. We understand that and we love him, even though he can be annoying.

So I get my kids to help me make the smoothie. We cut up and juice the fruit, add a few spoonfuls of yogurt and some almond milk. Then the kids call the dog, so they can hold him down and keep him calm. While no one is looking, I pop in the ice cube of frozen wheatgrass juice (some green nutrition that will disappear in the fruit).

They want to move the dog to the garage while I blend, which seems like a good idea. The kids chase him around the house, but can’t catch him. The dog runs around the sofa once, twice, three times, back and forth through the hall, and then sneaks under the table. My kids go under there with him. Good enough.

I run the blender. Whizz whizz…awoo! Whizz whizz…awoo! Whizz whizz…awoo! I stop the blender. Awoo ooo rawoo! The poor dog is crying.

Most of the time, this dog has a great temperament. He is very affectionate. We love him so much. But loud noises scare him.

The girls try to comfort him and tell him it’s OK. It takes a few minutes. He comes finally out from under the table. They start drinking their smoothies. The smoothies are a hit.

Source: Allrecipes.com.

Woof woof awooo! No more blender, but the dog is back at it, sitting by the front door this time. Awoo aroo! He keeps crying. I spend a few minutes petting him, tell him everything is alright, and we give him a treat, but he won’t eat it. And when the kids go back in the kitchen, where that horrible blender might eat them, the dog starts whining all over again.

It’s after dark, probably past his bedtime and almost time for the kids to sleep, so I decide to put the dog to bed. He sleeps in our garage, where he has a dog bed and some cushions with a small area rug. But before then, I have to get him to pee one more time, or else he’ll do it on his rug later in the night. I’ve cleaned that thing more times than I can count. And I know he hasn’t urinated in a couple of hours, because the last time I took him out, he noticed it was raining and came right back inside.

This is my dog.

So I take him outside in the yard. Unfortunately, it’s stormy: very windy and wet. My dog doesn’t like wet. Or windy. He’s jumpy. A lot of things bother him.

He runs around the yard, with me asking politely for him to pee. He’s searching for his spot, which changes daily. Most often, he pees on the scraggly lawn near the small trampoline, but lately he’s been watering a plum tree near the fence.

I’m standing in the dark, getting wetter in the rain, pleading with him to pee. He’s moving around, sniffing everything, re-tracing his steps, walking in circles, trying to pick his spot. And then a gust of wind comes up and blows some leaves in his face. He jumps up and runs across the grass, back onto the patio.

Just do it, buddy. Pee on the patio if you want. I don’t care. The rain is coming down in buckets. I’m getting really wet out here.

One of my kids comes out looking for me and she’s in her pajamas. Please get back inside, honey, it is pouring rain! She claims she can get the dog to pee. She has a special method.

Too late, I realize she doesn’t even have shoes on. In her socks, she runs out after him in the dark and rain, across the soaking wet lawn, the dog running in front of her. He thinks it’s a game and she can’t catch him. He runs around the trampoline and right back toward the garage, where I left the side door open. He scampers inside and curls up on his doggy bed. My daughter goes inside to change her socks.

While she’s inside, the dog gets up and walks to his water bowl. He had some water after dinner, but now he starts drinking again. And he drinks half the bowl.

That settles it. There is NO way he goes to bed without peeing first.

I try one more time to get the dog to whiz outside. He might not think he has to go now, but if he doesn’t do it, his bladder won’t hold up. Either he’ll pee in the garage at night or he’ll wake me up barking at 4:00 in the morning. If I let him out at 4:00 a.m., he’ll start barking at cats and raccoons or whatever he imagines out there, waking up the neighbors. We tried the doggy door thing, but he’d just go out there at night and bark at animals, which is why I have to keep taking him out myself.

Now is the time to do it. We try once more to go out in the rain.

This time he just sniffs and then goes to sit under the awning by the patio door, which is covered from the rain. I’m standing out in the rain, telling him to come back and pee. He’s sitting in the only dry spot, looking at me like I’m crazy. He must be thinking: if you want to pee, then why don’t you do it?

I’m tempted to leave this guy out here for a while and get the kids ready for bed, but then I won’t know if he did his deed or not. So it’s back inside for both of us. The kids can go to bed first and I’ll bring him out again later.

So I go back in the kitchen to wash some dishes. The dog starts crying by the door again, perhaps afraid the blender will attack me. He also whines by the door if he needs to pee.

Finally, my wife gets home from work. She can handle the girls while I deal with this beast. There’s only one way.

I leash him up and take him down the street. There’s a fence at the end of the block he always pees on. Every dog in the neighborhood knows that spot. The rain is even heavier now, so I bring an umbrella. As I pop it up, the dog jumps. He isn’t wild about umbrellas, because the pitter-pattering rain makes a loud sound, but he tolerates them.

We go down the block. I ask him to pee on the fence, but perhaps the rain has washed away the good smells. He walks right past it toward a bush and sniffs that. Perfect. But that bush isn’t the place. We move on to a tree a few feet further.

He sniffs the tree, starts circling it, and things are looking good. He comes back around to square up with the tree sideways, lifts his leg at the right angle, and…a loud truck goes by on the road.

The leg goes down and the dog starts barking. He likes to bark at trucks. So it’s on to the next tree. And the one after that. Nothing doing. I grab the little ****er, pick him up, and put him down on some wet grass right next to the tree. He stops and shakes water on me. Then he sniffs the tree, angles, lifts his leg, drops it quickly, and then starts walking again.

By this time, I’m cursing at him and pulling him to the next tree. No luck. There’s a street sign on the corner. I don’t usually like the dog to pee on sidewalk signs when there are enough trees and bushes around, but he’s always trying to pee on the sign poles. I lead him right toward this one.

Source: Flickr, Creative Commons by Ed Yourdon.

He walks by it without so much as a sniff. And finally, FINALLY! He stops at the next patch of grass, lifts his leg, and pees like a racehorse.

Source: Wikimedia, Creative Commons by Joshua Ganderson.

I don’t how his bladder holds that much. It’s a 10-second stream at least. Finally, he’s done, and we turn back home, quite wet from the rain.

On the way back, I lecture him about how easy it would have been, how much better he would have felt, if he’d just urinated at any one of a dozen opportunities before that. He responds by shaking the rain off, and onto me again, as I take off his leash in the garage.

Source: CNN.

And I finally put him to sleep on his doggie bed in the garage. I hug him and pet him good night. The kids come into the garage and say goodnight to him also.

This dog is utterly maddening sometimes, but we love him.

When I get back inside, my wife is drinking some smoothie, wondering why I used the blender when the dog clearly hates it so much. (Hmmmm….so you could drink smoothie?) The trash cans need to go out, since tomorrow is garbage pickup day. Did I remember to go over one of the kids’ math homework since she has a quiz tomorrow?

Aw, when would I have had time? Been trying to get the damn dog to pee all evening. ;)

My daughters start arguing about something. One stubs her toe and cries out for an ice pack, overacting in a bid for more attention (she'll get it, too). The other kid refuses to brush her teeth because she hasn’t had dessert yet. I remind her that she drank smoothie. We tried really hard not to raise spoiled kids, but they meet that definition and I'm a culprit.

I love my family very much. And after a few more minutes of evening chaos, I start thinking that the dog seems quite reasonable.

Thumbnail image: Pixabay, Public Domain.