Taking Dogs Out

If you share a home with pets you find that you have to take care of them. For the cats this means keeping their cat box relatively cleaned out -- once a day at least -- so they can be in there going to the bathroom about every time you're in the room.

To keep our dog from stealing the cats' food, we keep the cats' food container up on the cat box. So one of the worst things for me to see is one of the cats eating and the other cat's head sticking out of the cat box as he or she goes. That would do something to my appetite!

As far as the dog goes, this means going outside several times a day. Dogs have a whole tribal, instinctual thing about going to the bathroom. They can't just go. There has to be a lot of sniffing around, finding just the right spot to let it go. I've seen our dog really hone in on a spot many time and didn't know what was going on. But then in the fall when I saw squirrels burying walnuts, it occurred to me that our dog was discerning those spots and peeing there. So what happens? The squirrel digs up his walnuts and wonders 'Why does all my food taste like pee?'

It's about time for me to take her out again, which is why I'm thinking of this topic. Usually the last time out -- now or a little later -- is a quickie, just to take one final or two final pees before bed. She's pretty fast for the last outing. Some of the other outings through the day, though, can be very time consuming. This spot isn't right, this one has something wrong, this one is so so.

But, if we're at the park, that's a different story. Then it's pee pee pee, poop poop. Sometimes I keep track, just to see the big difference between park and home. The other day it was 6 pees and 2 of the other. That's quite a few, but they have that tribal, social, instinctual thing that's going on with various smells. It seems crazy to me, but there's no changing them now!