All About Urine

I've written about Scout before, albeit on a blog that has almost nothing to do with dogs, except as far as they add humor and frustration to my life. (So, the thing is blog)

It's just that I've had four dogs in my entire life and Scout is the first one that has ever made me think of getting rid of an animal. I'm from the "Adopt a Dog = Adopt a Family Member for Life" school of thought. I knew a woman once who got rid of her cats when she moved because they didn't go with her new apartment and she didn't want any messes. It ruined our friendship. I couldn't get past it --I mean how shallow do you have to be to do something like that? Who gets rid of a pet because it's not the proper accessory??

And honestly, there is nothing so dreadfully wrong with Scout. He's annoying as hell in his damn enthusiasm for the almighty tennis ball. (He took off down the greenbelt in back of our house earlier today, chasing after some deer. When he came back, he still had the ball in his mouth. Imagine the moral dilemma if he'd gotten close to one --put the ball down and catch the deer or keep the ball in his mouth? It boggles the mind.) He's no rocket scientist but honestly, I think Scout really just needs someone to work with him more and I'd be glad to do that.

Except for the peeing thing.

Scout does that thing the dog trainers call "Submissive Urination." You cannot speak sternly or kindly to him without him peeing everywhere. The only way around this is to ignore him or to speak sternly or kindly to him outside. Well, if he's done something heinous INSIDE, like barking at the cats at 3:00 in the morning, there is no way to get him OUTSIDE before he pees everywhere so you can scold him. As soon as you grab his collar to take him out: pee-city.

The good news is that we only have carpet in one small room downstairs and Scout hasn't really figured out that he can go UPSTAIRS yet. (See note above about not being a rocket scientist.)But it's just such a problem, even with the ease of clean-up. I mean, I just don't want to clean up urine five times a day.

And he's a really cute dog, too, so everyone who walks through our front door wants to pet him. So, then he pees everywhere. He's nervous around kids so he just pees on principle when he sees them. And god, don't SCARE him or there's an entirely new development in the area of voiding--don't make me say any more than that. (Okay, let's just say that it turns out to be actually possible to scare the shit out of someone/something.)

The other thing is the pitch of Scout's bark, which is on some sort of frequency that sits right in your spine and makes you react in uncharacteristic ways. My husband, the only person who actually LIKES Scout, once threw a cooler at him for barking right in my husband's ear, trying to get him to stop working and start throwing the ball.

So, I don't know. He's almost three. That's about another ten years and just thinking about how much urine I'll clean up in that time makes me a little woozy.