What’s Your Superpower?

He's lucky he's cute.

Tony hasn’t messed in the house for a long time.* 

Even so, his superpower remains: Given all the possible options, he will always pick the place I least want him to. If I put him out, he might pee right there on the welcome mat. (His oh-so-tragic facial expression says, “Oh, but it’s drizzling. I might get wet.”) Though he’s got the whole yard, his mission is to poop in the garage.

Some people can suck every bit of fun out of anything, through their worry, their rigid thinking, their control-freakiness, their incessant complaining. Alternatively, some people are crazy-making risk takers. (Have you noticed? They rarely get hurt. It’s the people who are with them, like you or me, who do.) Some people are just mean. Some people, God bless ‘em, just breathe loud or snap their gum or say “Ya know what I mean?” after every phrase.

But as my sister always says, perhaps pointedly, “It’s easy to see other people’s stuff but not your own.”

So, what’s my superpower?

Ach, I see myself in almost all the ones I’ve listed … except I’m not a risk-taker and haven’t ever peed on the welcome mat or pooped in the garage.

What’s your superpower?

*Yay! … Knock on wood … I doubt I will ever bet any money on Tony not peeing or pooping in the house, though I am, at this point, about 80% sure of him … If I do ever succeed at this, is there any way I could put “Housetraining willful little dog” on my resume? ‘Cuz it’s one of the harder things I’ve ever undertaken.

My Life is Shit

These two produce an inordinate amount of poop.

When we decided to get our second dog, Tony, I did not think of how I was going to have double the dog shit in our tiny yard, nor did I think house-training him would be a big deal.

Where we are with the house training: I am inordinately proud of myself for teaching Tony to ring the bells I hung on the doors when he wants to go out.

Honestly, though, that was easy, took about a day for him to get it.

The hard part: convincing Tony that, yes, it is important to never pee or poop in the house.

Also, he abuses those bells, sometimes ringing them every few minutes, and for a wide variety of reasons, such as he’d like to lay out in the sun.

Which is fine, except we have discovered that it is impossible to make our driveway gate “Tony-proof.” He can get under it when it’s closed. However, we can’t make that gap any smaller or it won’t open.

(Contemplating an “invisible fence,” if you’ve got any advice about that.)

So, for weeks, I have been at the other end of the leash, poop bag in hand, every time Tony (and Lola, who always comes along) has pooped or peed.

There are times in life when biology is much more front and center than usual. 

I told this to my husband, a gastroenterologist. “Yeah, tell me about it,” he said.

I am reminded of bringing home new babies with all that entails, from spitting up (etc.) for the baby to let-down (etc.) for the mom.

Working on getting Tony's and Lola's biology back to humming along without quite so much of my involvement.

A Two-Dog Day

Travelling in the car is a bit
more of a production, too.

I’m just getting used to having two dogs, but here’s what I’ve discovered so far. 

I’m trying to house-train our newest, Tony, so he is either in his crate or I am on him like white on rice, going on frequent bathroom trips in addition to being ever-ready to scoop him up and run for the door, trailing pee and yelling “No, no, no! No pee in the house!”

The vet, who I am beginning to realize was being a wee bit disingenuous, said, “It’s easy. As soon as he’s gone without an accident in the house for a week, you’re done.”

Well, let’s just say, we’ve had to reset that clock a few times. (It’s like “Groundhog Day” around here but with pee and poop involved.)

Technically, Tony and I should be connected by a short leash at all times. When my husband asked me why we were not, I pointed out that my sanity is worth something too.

I amuse myself on our frequent outings by pretending to be the grandfather from “Moonstruck,” muttering, “Ciao, bella! Andiamo! Bella luna!” The dogs don’t seem to mind, though the neighbors are probably wondering.

And those neighbors also probably hear my heartfelt cheers several times a day – “Good boy! Yay! So smart!” – when Tony does his business outside. I’ve even started to cheer 9-year-old Lola since she seems to think it’s unfair – those sad eyes – when I cheer for Tony but not for her.

I’ve discovered we’ve got a bit of work to do on walks outside our yard. Lola pulls on her leash like she’s running the Iditarod and likes to argue with me on street corners about which way we should go. Tony, meanwhile, loses his mind every time he sees another dog.

We are a work in progress.

The Scoop on Picking Up Poop

© Diana Thomson

OK, so most of us know, even if we don’t like and even if we don’t do it, that dog owners are supposed to pick up after their animals.

And for those who don’t, some places are looking into ways to catch them, like by testing the DNA of poops and tracing them back to the dogs’owners.

However simple the concept of cleaning up after your dog seems, some people don’t get it. Take, for instance, one of my mother’s neighbors. He carries bags, brightly colored ones, no less, he deposits his dog’s poops in them, but then he ties up the bag and leaves it on whoever’s lawn the dog pooped on. See? That misses the whole point. You’d think this didn’t have to be spelled out, but apparently it does: No one else should have to deal with your dog’s poops.

In my own neighborhood, via Nextdoor, which I think of as the “Nosy Neighbor Network,” even as I use it myself, there was a long-running debate about whether it was OK to toss your dog’s poop in your neighbor’s garbage can while you are out walking. The majority opinion was no, though I enjoyed one opposition post: “Oh, the horror, to have your garbage can smell like … garbage!”

My husband and I differ in how we handle the poop bag once it is, err, filled. I wrap the bag up into a small package and hold it, hidden, in my hand. One drawback: yup, your hand might smell more like poop if you do it this way. My husband, in contrast, holds the bag by the handles and even swings it as he walks and talks to people. I think, no one wants to see that.

And that’s all the scoop I have on that.

Dog Poop

© Diana Thomson

Someday, archeologists are going to excavate our landfills and find millions of little plastic bags,
each one containing a single dog shit. (Also, millions of disposable diapers, each containing a single baby shit.)

What are they going to think?

If they surmise that we were fascinated by shit, they wouldn’t be entirely wrong, at least about some of us.

Three generations of my family play a game that could be called “Make the other person look at the pooping dog.” You are out somewhere with a companion. You see a dog shitting. You figure out a way to fool your companion into looking at the pooping dog. (“What kind of flower is that?” you might ask, pointing.) The goal is to get the other person to look in a way they can’t deny: they stopped and turned around, for instance.

My mother is the reigning champ at this game. One memorable day, she cried, “Look! A mother deer with two fawns!” My sister and I ran to the window … only to see our dog taking a dump in the yard.

This game is not easy. It takes a dog only seconds to shit; you’ve got to act fast. (And it is much less easy once people have learned that you are a weirdo who will do something like this.)

But we are not alone. Here, from a professional photographer, are “Dramatic Portraits of Dogs Pooping.” And here’s where you can order your 2014 “pooping dog” calendar. And this news story is about a researcher who recorded thousands of dog shits, to show that dogs – when they are fussing around with where to place their shits – may be trying to line them up with the magnetic forces of the earth. (Thanks, Yoram and Melissa.)

The Straight Poop on Bathroom Words

© Diana Thomson

When my sisters were small, they knew a boy whose mother had taught him to call poop “plop,” as in  the sound it makes when it hits the toilet water.

This strikes me as a mom trying too hard to be cute.

My sisters adjusted the word, as only little kids can. They started calling it “bonk,” expanding it sometimes to “ca ca bonk.” To this day, this expression remains in active use in my family.

The first time I brought my husband-to-be home to meet my parents, he spotted my mother, standing out in the rain in the backyard, trying to get Rufus, a sullen little lhasa apso mop-head of a dog, to pee.

“Make winkie-tinks! Make winkie-tinks!” my mother was crying.

My husband went out to join her in the cheerleading. He thought it was funny, which was good, since my family and I were letting our freak flags fly with him right from the beginning.

Rufus, not amused, did not pee.

I don’t like the terms “number one” and “number two.” These were obviously coined by someone who does not find poop, pee and farts funny – and I do not trust such people.

There is a septic-tank-cleaning company in Connecticut, however, whose slogan is, “We’re Number One in the Number-Two Business.” They also call their pumper trucks “honey wagons.” I like this company.

Kids in my family call their rear-ends “dupies,” from the Polish word “dupa.” One of the (many) roots of our family tree lay in Poland, you see.

If they haven’t already, I think linguists should study the development of bathroom words, particularly ones taught to children. Changing social mores, changing notions of children, of humor, the evolution of existing words, borrowing from other languages, it’s all there.