Julia

Please don’t feel bad for laughing. This is my therapy of sorts. I knew, even as it was happening, that eventually it would be funny. On my ride out to the beach I started working at seeing the funny side because, what else are you going to do? I could angst about it endlessly or I could change my viewpoint and see the humor, my choices in life are almost always to avoid angst and see humor.

Chica and I are attempting a reconciliation. Last night I took her and her brother for a walk and there were treats in my pocket – isn’t it wonderful when you can stand right next to your latest poop and chow down on a biscuit? Apparently, it is. I’ve remembered that the joys of doggy anatomy are that if they get a little exercise right after they eat, you can almost time it. So, I’ll be doing that for awhile and see if I can get that part under control.

I did consider that she could have a new home when I was at my maddest but really, I probably couldn’t do it. She and Hombre are brother and sister and have lived with us around 6 years, we’re stuck with each other. I do think that she was happiest and felt safest living in the RV, much like Penny on the boat. She understood immediately that the place to go was outside the RV. Here, as Theresa mentioned, it is harder to tell what is inside and what is outside and I think she does not feel safe and enclosed here. OK, that’s it for the doggy psychoanalysis session. I’m just going to walk her till she goes and keep track of it – also treats, I believe that treats will overcome any dogs bad behavior.

Sorry you had to go thru it though, just to get a Xian tattoo!

Linda
Isla Chica

Seventeen years ago I got a rescue dog that I still have. The two of us lived on my small sailboat in Fort Lauderdale, FL. The problem I had with Penny was that she used to poop on the dock and this was unacceptable since, with the exception of our boat, all the boats on the dock were for sale and steaming piles of dog poop are not a good marketing tool.

I was at a loss as to how to handle this. Penny was supposedly house broken but here she was in the great out of doors so in her mind why shouldn’t she be able to do her business anywhere as long as it wasn’t “inside?” I couldn’t whack on her because I could see her point of view even if she couldn’t grasp the concept of keeping the dock a poop-free zone. I pondered for weeks on how to remedy the situation. Then one afternoon, as I was going to our boat, I caught her squatting and I saw the solution. She had chosen a spot situated exactly between two cleats located on either side of the dock. I got two lines out and tied her over her pile. It was the middle of September and it’s REALLY hot here then. I left her a large bowl of water and left her there for three hours. She got the message and there was never again a pile of dog poop on the dock again.

As they say in television commercials…”but WAIT! There’s more!”

Just across from the dock was a small boat yard where a friend and I had a small repair shop and a large selection of boats for sale were also there. Penny had the run of the yard. She never barked at the large number of people who roamed the yard each day but she would often approach the strangers and sniff them out.

There was one couple who were there often. They bought boats, fixed them up and shipped them out to the newly-free eastern European countries. For some reason they didn’t like Penny and were constantly “shooing” her away with extravagant waving of their hands. They eventually got a deal on a 60-foot sailboat and kept the boat at the end of our dock while they were rehabilitating it between their long trips back to Europe.

One day the dockmaster asked if I’d been down to Connie and Micha’s boat lately. I said I hadn’t because I had no reason to. “Go take a look,” he said. So I wandered down to the end of the dock and hopped on board and broke out laughing. Penny had, indeed, stopped pooping on the dock. Instead, when nature called, she would go to the end of the dock, hop on the boat owned by her nemesises and did her business there. There were more than a dozen tributes to her contempt of for them scattered about the teak decks. Good doggie. Just because they can’t talk doesn’t mean they’re stupid.

No matter how hard you may try to pretend to like her, she can knows she’s not your favorite. And she’s always going to see right through that ruse.