Humiliations and General Grossness (Part 4)

I slept very poorly. I kept having mini panic attacks that once the septic guys dug up the other side of the tank they would find something even more horribly and expensively wrong. What if the reason the pipe had broken within the tank was because that whole end of the tank had collapsed? That would suck.

At the ass crack of dawn, I finally arose to await the arrival of Terrance and his assistant. They'd said they would roll in around 7:30. I made extra coffee in case they needed some and commenced to wait. While I did, it began to snow. We'd had nary a flake since mid-November, which I've attributed to the fact that I'd had my snow tires installed in mid-November. But down the flakes were coming now. I wondered if it would mean a halt to the project for the day.

Around 8:30, Terrance and his assistant arrived driving a different truck from the previous day. This one was a smaller and with a flat black metal bed in the back upon which was mounted a bright and shiny new portajohn pump. Hitched to the back of the truck, though, was a long trailer on which was secured a medium sized backhoe. Terrance unloaded it and soon its treads were rolling up my driveway and then across the yard to the septic dig site.

As they set up, I told Terrance the story of Sadie rolling on the pipe. They agreed it was an awful experience, but I know it was far from the worst septic-based thing that had happened to them, so they didn't feel too bad.

With a bit of digging from the backhoe's scoop, a new hole was opened a few feet to the right from the previous one. Some fine tune digging with a hand shovel later and the tank's other lid was exposed. This time they hooked the chain for it across the backhoe's shovel and lifted it off. Inside was a deep dark and relatively empty space, save for some liquid in the bottom. Terrance borrowed my flashlight again and poked his head into the tank to have a look around. He explained that he needed to see which direction the pipe leading out to the drainage field was headed. The interior portion of that pipe was the broken one that Sadie had rolled on, which is why he had to look inside the tank to see where it had been connected before the break. It seemed to be at the southern end of the tank, so that's where they next began to dig to expose the pipe leading into the yard. As expected, this pipe was also broken and partially collapsed. He said this was likely due to the whole tank settling at some point and sheering off the pipe on the outside, which led to the breaking of the interior part of the pipe as well. It probably still worked to some degree, but not at prime efficiency.

Within half an hour, Terrance and his assistant had dug out around the pipe, sawed through it below the break, installed a new section of thick PVC pipe that ran from within the tank, through the tank wall and connected to the drainage field pipe. We were now back in business.

"Wait about two weeks then pour a whole box of Rid-X down the toilet," Terrance advised. Then he added, "You still want that tree pulled up?" I explained that the wife did not want that tree dug up at all, but had agreed to it on the grounds that within a couple of months this would no longer be our house and we would not have to be concerned with whether there was a tree imbalance in front of it. Terrance's assistant hooked their chain around the middle of the tree, the other end to the backhoe and with a smooth application of reverse they pulled it right out of the ground, roots and all. Then it was just a matter of recovering both sides of the freshly repaired tank and smoothing the mud back down in a mostly level fashion. It doesn't look too bad. Not nearly as bad as the wife expected. The tree itself I sawed all the limbs from and will shortly carve it up for firewood with my chainsaw. I'll plant grass over it and hopefully by the time the place sells we'll have something of a yard over there again. And when it comes time for the new owners to have the septic inspected, we expect it will get a good grade. Much like the one the house that we are purchasing has received. The location of that new house and the story of how and why we came to buy it, however, is another story.

Humiliations and General Grossness (Part 3)

I went back in the house and was greeted by our dogs, who were very interested in getting outside to potty and explore and see what smells these strangers had left behind. Oh, you'll smell some smells, I thought. I opened the back door and out they ran.

After several minutes, I began to wonder why the dogs had not returned to the back door. They're usually only good for a couple of squirts in the yard and then they're back wanting to be let in. Oh, they're probably around front checking out the smelly hole in the ground, I reasoned. So I stepped out onto the front porch where I could see them over by the hole. I clapped my hands to call them and they came running. Moose trotted up the steps first, happy to see his pa as always. Then Sadie rounded the edge of the porch, a huge smile on her doggy face, and I was afforded a horrifying sight nearly as bad as the gates of hell earlier. Sadie's neck and shoulders were coated in something black. To the untrained eye, it might have appeared to be very black mud. But to my trained eye and nose, I knew it to be raw sewage.

Where did she... ? How did she...? What the f...?!

And even as I watched, she gave me my answer by dashing back to the poo tank pit where I witnessed her bend over and roll gleefully onto the sewage-coated piece of broken pipe that was still laying in the grass above the pit.

"LEAVE IT!!!!" I screamed. "YOU! LEAVE! IT!!!"

Sadie looked up through a haze of filth and flashed a big ol' grin of satisfaction. This was by far the greatest and best stinky thing she'd ever found to roll in and she was in doggy heaven.

Cursing, I threw open the front door and yelled at Moose to get in the house. I then marched back to the bathroom to prepare to give that damn dog the queen mother of all baths.

But which bathroom to use? Normally we bath the dogs in the big tub in the master bathroom. But we'd not yet sealed the new grout in the master bath tub surround. I could bath her in the hall bathtub, but did I really want to chance this dog shaking wet sewage all over the freshly painted walls? Onto the good towels? I finally opted for the bathroom with the most room and the most tile and went with the master. First things first, though, I snatched up my phone and texted "YOUR DAUGHTER JUST ROLLED IN SEWAGE!!!" to my wife. Then I started the tub and turned it to hot before undressing and putting on my ratty painting shorts and a T-shirt I wouldn't mind throwing out. Sadie could not, after all, be willing to come to the tub on her own, so I would have to capture her in my arms and carry her. This would mean time spent in physical contact with sewage.


Sadie was on the back deck when I went to look for her, but she caught a glimpse of what I was wearing and went into red alert. I tried to coax her over, but she dropped her front down to the deck and woofed. Any move I made toward her sent her skittering away. She knew I was out to get her and bathe her. I opened the back door and ordered her into the house, determined to get her into closed quarters where her running range was limited. I then cornered her in the kitchen where I was able to reason with her until she let her guard down enough for me to slip my arms under her chest and lift her up.

I held my breath as I carried Sadie back toward our bedroom, but half way there I had to take a breath. Oh, it was awful. I felt my throat tighten, suppressing a gag. You never consider when you use the bathroom that you'll ever see, let alone touch that waste ever again, but here I was carrying a dog coated in it.

I lowered Sadie into the tub and set about spraying her off with the shower hose. I avoided her head, though, because that's usually the trigger that makes her shake and the longer we could avoid that the better for the surrounding room. Pulling the shower curtain as far closed as I could, I then sprayed it off too then growled loudly at her when she did shake. Dots of dark water struck the shower surround and dripped down. Ewww.

Unfortunately, in my haste to get things ready I neglected to actually bring doggie shampoo into the bathroom. What I had brought was doggie conditioner. I couldn't leave her there to go look for any shampoo, either, or she'd be out of the tub and dripping diluted sewage around the house for sure. So I grabbed the next best thing, a bottle of Head & Shoulders, and started pouring it on her. I gave the bath extra attention to detail and spent a lot of time scrubbing her face, neck and shoulders. Then I rinsed her off and, since I'd brought it in, poured on some conditioner. Finally, I took a sniff of her neck to see if the sewage was gone. It took my nose a few seconds to process it, but it seemed like the smell was gone. I gave her some extra rinsing to make sure, then toweled her off with three different towels--all of which were popped into a hot washing machine before the dog could finish her triumphant post-shower victory prance around the house.

This accomplished, I cleaned up the bathroom, washed all the sewage drops away and then had a shower myself using the same H&S technique as with Sadie. After I too was dry, I grabbed one of our industrial strength contractor's trash bags and went outside to deal with the poo pipe. I managed to get it into the bag without actually touching it, then sealed it inside the trash can.

It took a few hours before I risked letting Sadie out again and even then I watched her every move and called her back every time she tried to head around to the front of the house. I had dispatched the pipe, but who knew what sort of drippings she could sniff out and roll in. I only hoped the following day's adventure would prove fruitful and far less disgusting.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Humiliations and General Grossness (Part 2)

Terrance said that when he was first starting out in the poo game, about the same age as his assistant, he was working on pumping out the tank of a man and wife whose septic system had become clogged. After they got the tank open and the clog roto-rooted, the man of the house came out and asked Terrance what had been causing the clog. Young Terrance said, "Condoms."

"What?" the man said.

"Condoms. You know, rubbers?"

The man of the house said that this was not possible. He and his wife didn't use condoms.

"Well, maybe they're from house guests," young Terrance reportedly had offered.

No. This wasn't likely either.

"Well, maybe it was the people who owned the place before you," Terrance said.

At this point the man of the house said, "I built the house." The man then excused himself, went inside and there shortly followed a great deal of shouting. Terrance's boss, who had been at the truck during this, came running up at the sound of the screaming from within the house and asked Terrance what he'd said to cause it. Terrance told him.

"Boy, you never tell the customer what's in the tank!" the boss said.

I laughed at this story, but within mere minutes we were to discover something of a different brand of disturbing within my own poo tank. As the level of the poo decreased within the tank, a large PVC pipe was exposed near the entrance. This was the end of the sewage pipe that ran from our plumbing beneath the house. It ended in a vertical T-joint, allowing the sewage to freely fall into the tank--at least until it had been submerged by it. Unfortunately, as the level of poo finally reached the bottom of the tank, yet another section of T-capped pipe was exposed, lying in the muck at an odd angle. It was not running from the house, but was instead broken, as evidenced by the shards of its non-T-capped end.

"Ohhhhh," Terrance said when he saw it. "If that's what I think it is then you're in for a world of shit."

"What?" I said.

Terrance borrowed my flashlight then got on his hands and knees and lowered his head down into the gates of hell for a look around. He shone the flashlight into the darkness, specifically toward the easterly end of the tank which extended several feet beneath the ground, running in front of the tree. When he came back up he looked grim.

"Yeah, you're in a world of shit."

It seems that the piece of broken pipe at the bottom of the tank was actually supposed to be connected within the other side of the tank and was the pipe that connected to the drainage field of the septic system. The way a septic system works is that all the waste from the house enters the tank where solids sink and paper and general sludge float. The solids are digested by microbes from the monthly Rid-X treatments we send down. The liquids (which include waste, but also gray water such as shower and general water runoff, fill up the tank faster until they reach the pipe leading out into the drainage field--which are a series of porous pipes running down into the yard. The pipes of the drainage field are surrounded by gravel and dirt and the whole thing acts as a filtration system, allowing the moisture to run back into soil where it is further filtered until it eventually returns to the ground water. According to Terrance, though, the broken pipe was preventing this system from working naturally and all the waste had just been building up in the tank itself. The system was broken and if not repaired would just lead to more cleanouts more frequently.

I shook my head in annoyance at this, but was not entirely surprised. After all, it's not like anything around here is ever going to be simple or go to plan. No, it all takes three times as long, cost three times as much and drives me nigh unto madness before the end of it. At least this time, though, I had two guys who were willing to return, venture into the gates of hell and fix our poo pipes. We'd be able to include their work in our packet of Cool Things We Did to Make the House a More Attractive Purchase for prospective buyers.

The poo tank assistant fished the broken pipe out of the poo tank with the poo rake and then dumped it in the yard. Terrance then picked it up and used it as a visual aid to explain the work that would need to be done, including replacing that thin chunk of pipe with much thicker modern PVC that wouldn't break. The work would involve a lot of digging--including possibly digging up the offending and dangerous tree, if we liked--to expose the other lid to the poo tank where the bulk of the work would need to be done. Until the work was done, the septic system would be inoperative and would just fill up to the gates of hell once again. It would take a while, but far sooner than if the drainage field was operational.

Knowing we couldn't rightly sell the house with a broken septic system, I agreed to the repairs. Soon the men were plugging the gates of former hell with their concrete lid again and winding their poo hoses back onto their truck. Terrance promised to return at the crack of dawn the following day.

If only the gates of hell had been the grossest thing I'd see all day.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Humiliations and General Grossness (Part 1)

One of the most humiliating experiences I can imagine is to take a huge dump in the front yard and then invite someone over to have a look at it. It's just not something that is ever done. Even more humiliating and nonsensical, though, would be to then ask them to dispose of it for you. As unbelievable a scenario as this is, it's exactly what I did today, only several thousand times worse.

Let me back up.

We're in the process of getting our house ready to sell. Don't get me wrong, we love our house and would not want to sell it at all, except that certain opportunities have presented themselves and we are pursuing them. (I'm sure I'll have more on that in future posts.) As part of this process, we've been going down the list of home improvement projects we've intended to accomplish for the four years we've lived here and have been finally getting to some of them while consigning others to the "let the new owners do it" heap. Thusly, we finally had the automatic garage door opener on my side of the garage replaced, redid the hall bathroom--though not the complete overhaul we'd planned--regrouted some places in the master bath tub, finally painted another bit of the master bath that we'd intended to completely remodel and had left the old color up so we wouldn't have to paint it twice, etc. Other items, however, were added to the list out of the blue.

"We should call someone to come clean out the septic tank," the wife said over breakfast. I'd already been thinking about that, oddly enough--not because of breakfast but because a cleaning of the poo tank was probably due. According to the paperwork we'd received with the house, the last time it had been cleaned was the year prior to us moving in. So if you figure once every 3-5 years being the norm for emptying a poo tank (according to some standards), it was about time. The thing is, I've never lived in a place with a septic system before. We also had no real clue as to where the tank was located for most of our time in the house. We deduced it was somewhere in the front yard, because that was the direction in which our poo pipe ran from beneath our house, but we were not at all sure where exactly the tank was buried. Our upper front yard has a lot of trees, so it seemed like it would have to be located in between some of them, which didn't leave a lot of room for a 1000 gallon concrete tank.

During our troubles with the well a few months ago, I had to spend some time on the phone with the health department to try and determine when our well was dug. While I was on there, I asked if they had records of the septic tank's installation and, hopefully, location. They faxed over two diagrams, one for the proposed tank and drainage field location and one for the inspected tank and drainage field location. These diagrams showed different locations for the tank, but I figured the inspected one was correct. However, this put the tank somewhere outside my office window, with the drainage field further down into the yard. I didn't do any digging to check, but figured that would be where I'd have to direct any poo removal specialists when that day came.

That day was today.

The poo removal specialists arrived around midday and were soon awash in the oh-so-vicious barks of Sadiemoose (the collective name for our two dogs Sadie and Moose). While the dogs snarled and slavered from behind the front window glass, I went out to meet the poo removal specialists carrying with me the aforementioned poo tank diagram. I explained to them our lack of knowledge about the poo tank's location, but proposed they check where the diagram showed.

"Has it been backing up on you at all?" Terrance the poo tank man asked.

"No, not at all," I said. "We just want to get it cleared before we sell it."

Terrance and his poo tank assistant then walked out to the area in front of my office window and poked the ground with a pointy metal pole for a while in the clearing in front of the two pine trees planted there. They made their way around the clearing, then back up between the trees near the house, then back down a way. There were occasional thunks as the pole struck either concrete or rock. Still, several minutes passed this way with no real consensus between the men as to where digging should commence.

Terrance took something plastic and orange from his pocket and handed it to me.

"Could you go inside and flush this twice?" he said. I looked at the plastic device. It was about the size of a flattened golf ball, but had a slot along one side within which I could see a small metal disc, about the size of a thick watch battery. By "flush this twice" I knew he meant, flush the tracker down, then flush the toilet again to send it on through into the tank. So I went inside and did this. When I came back, Terrance had produced what looked like a metal detector handle minus the pole and detecting disc. He aimed it at the ground until he found where it seemed to be the loudest, which was beside and beneath some of the limbs of one of the pine trees. They stabbed the pole down once more and struck something solid.

Digging began, hampered a bit by the limbs of the tree.

"That tree's in a bad location," Terrance said. His point was that with the tank being as close to the tree as it was, there would be root problems eventually if not already. They might not make it through the concrete tank, but roots could certainly bore into the septic pipe leading into the tank and gum up the works. He recommended the tree be taken out.

Within 20 minutes a foot and a half deep pit was dug out and the upper surface of a section of the concrete poo tank was exposed. There was a rectangular concrete plug in the top of the tank with a rebar hook embedded in it. They looped some chain through that hook and then lifted the whole thing off. And exposed there before us were the gates of hell itself.

I will not go into detail as to what the gates of hell look like in this case, but I will say that the gates were hellishly FULL. To the brim even. I will also not describe the smell, which you already have a pretty good idea about I'm sure. What I will say, though, is that having four years worth of one's own... um... leavings, exposed to strangers is a VERY embarrassing experience, even if it is the job of those very strangers to view and smell such leavings on a daily basis. I wanted to apologize and run away and issue denials all at the same time. But there was just no denying what we were all looking at and smelling, nor which of us had produced a goodly portion of it.

"Looks like we got here just in time," Terrance said. Then he and his poo tank assistant went back to their poo truck. Soon poo hoses were hooked up and stretched across the yard and into the gates of hell. The powerful poo pumps on the poo truck soon began to make quick work of their 1000 gallons worth of burden. And Terrance stood by with a giant poo rake to help the process along. He seemed pretty skilled with that rake, and was able to use it to retrieve his orange radio tracker, which he then tossed to his assistant. Made me wonder exactly how clean that thing had been before it had been handed to me earlier.

"I been doin this a couple days," Terrance said with a grin. "Thirty five years, actually," he added.

"Wow," I said. "What's the strangest thing you've pulled out of one of these?"

"A dead body," he said. Then he grinned again and said "Not really."

But he then told a story that was nearly as good.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

This is why we can never have "nice" things.

JUICE'S EARBUD LAW #1: Our dogs will not utterly EFFing destroy earbuds that cost only $5 at Big Lots. Earbuds over $20 in value? U.F.D.

The first act of destruction was for a pair of Bose earbuds my goodly wife purchased for me as a birthday gift three years ago. Magnificent things, they were, and actually fairly tough. But they lasted under a year before Sadie, in her puppy exuberance, jumped on their cord one too many times, severing the line in one channel. I still have them, on the off chance that one day nanotechnology will progress to a point that they can be repaired.

After that, I returned to using the Creative Labs earbuds that came with my old and dearly missed Zen Vision-M mp3 player. They too were leaped upon numerous times by Sadie, causing me to develop a tick comparable to the retarded younger brother of Cameron Diaz in There's Something About Mary. In the throes of these ticks, I am driven into furious screaming rages whenever my earbuds are violently yanked from my ears by a jumping dog. Again, my neighbors must absolutely love me. Eventually, the plastic casing of the headphone wires began to crack, so I repaired them using dabs of J.B. Weld. That worked well enough, but they were unsightly, so they became my backup pair that lived in the car.

After the untimely and dog-unrelated death of the Creative Zen Vision-M, I got another pair of Creative Labs buds with the purchase of a Creative Zen X-Fi, a player that I cannot recommend less. While the Zen Vision-M was a talented and elegant soul trapped in the body of a fat shlub, the Zen X-Fi was more like a really klutzy pop singer/actress with a substance abuse problem and an eating disorder. Sort of a Phillip Seymour Hoffman vs. Lindsay Lohan kind of thing. The earbuds that came with it were pretty good, though, but they too were met with doggy destruction. While I had finally trained Sadie to stop jumping up on me, we now had Moose who to this day refuses to stop doing that. In fact, after destroying the new Creative Buds, he then helped destroy the old emergency backup buds as well.

I then spent several months buying only $5 earbuds from Big Lots. They were Sentry brand buds, each pair contained within stout metal housing and not at all bad in the sound quality department. One pair lasted me nearly a whole year, with scarcely a doggy jump at all. I even managed to run them through the washing machine on more than one occasion and they still sounded fine. Eventually they too died and I bought another pair. In fact, I took to buying two pairs at a time, to have an emergency backup pair. They were great.

Nearly two months ago, I purchased a set of Tweeked Audio earbuds, which can be seen in remnant form in the accompanying photo. Tweeked is a frequent sponsor of the Nerdist Podcast, a show I wanted to support. And for about a month and a half they were great earbuds. My only beef with them is that the plastic coating is of the textured rubber variety, which catches on cargo pockets, plus the fact that the cord itself is long enough to reach my cargo pockets in the first place. My other beef is not a design flaw, but that the dogs seemed to sense I'd spent a little money on them and they were starting to get jumpy around them again. I found myself guarding my cord when in the presence of the dogs, always ready to turn a hip to the side to catch any enthusiastic leaping.

Last evening, while out playing with the dogs and listening to Jordan, Jesse, Go!, I called Sadie over to me to try and get her to play stick. As she arrived her fluffy tail caught the cord of my earbuds and its curly end deftly wound around the cord. I think she felt the cord on her tail and thought something was trying to get her, for she then tried to dash away. The buds were yanked from my ears as her tail slid up to the buds themselves. Oddly, I didn't scream even once. I just said, "Oh, Sadie, Oh, Sadie, NO Sadie!" as the cord tightened and then broke, leaving me with the lower half of the cord dangling from my pocket. One of the buds flew apart in mid-air and I saw it land. The other bud and the rest of the cable disappeared in Sadie's tail. I later found it ten feet away, where her tail must have flung it.

That's it.

No more.

I'm headed to Big Lots and will stock up on a whole pile of cheap ass Sentry headphones. I may even buy an extra pair to sacrifice to the dogs in advance.

He doesn't know he's cute or anything.

Anna Tolien? I think I went out with her once.

The wife and I have determined for ourselves that our puppy Moose (at right) is not a "damn little chow chow" as has been suggested. The chow features have failed to manifest, beyond a slight spotting at the tip of his tongue. However, we've still been doubtful as to his alleged status as a Leonberger/St. Bernard mix. While he has some Leonberger features, he also has some definite German shepherdy features too, though his flopped forward ears would seem to indicate he wasn't full blooded German shepherd.

At some point while watching TV, a breed of dog called an Anatolian Shepherd flashed across our screen and it struck us that it looked an awful lot like an adult version of Moose might. We quickly dashed to the innanet and looked it up.

Check it.

This is a picture from an Anatolian site. Same black face, same coloration, same curly tail, same love of sticks. The more we read, the more this breed (or a mixture therewith) was the better fit for Moose's ancestry. And from everything we've been reading, like Leonbergers, Anatolian Shepherds are supposed to be great dogs, not to mention exceptional guard dogs. They're also about as enormous as Leonbergers, which makes the wife happy, and with no drooling to speak of, which makes me happy.

Meanwhile, he's really come a long way as far as his potty training is concerned. I think we had at least three consecutive weeks without any piddling in the house and only one or two poop incidents. Mostly, when he needs to go, he either goes to the back door and looks at us until we notice him there, or he comes and finds us and barks at us until we ask him if he needs to go potty at which point he barks louder and/or tries to bite us in the face. The later is discouraged, the former encouraged. However, his efforts don't always work so well when we're asleep.

We've been encouraging both dogs to stay off of our bed. This is not easy, because they LOVE our bed and are fond of sleeping in it with us, if they can get away with it. However, beyond the matter of shedded dog hair and stank residue in the bed, there's the matter of massive and soon to be massive dogs hogging up all the leg room in our bed while we're trying to sleep. We could banish Sadie from the bed fairly well, but without a working crate (due to the fact that Moose destroyed the zipper in his "nite nite" collapsible crate) it was more difficult to keep moose out of it.

So not long after Christmas, we bought them both dog beds stuffed with recycled memory foam shredding. These we've stationed beside our bed and have been enforcing their use. So far this has worked surprisingly well. And the timing of Moose's potty training success finally kicking in around the same time was good. This way, we could sleep through the night with the dogs on their beds and didn't have to worry about puddles in the morning.

Two nights ago, Moose drank a lot of water before bed. At some point in the wee hours, he woke up, had to go potty and began trying to wake one of us up to let him out. Unfortunately, we were solidly asleep and the first we heard of any of this activity was when Sadie snarled after Moose crawled too close to her bed. We snuggled in and were on our way back to sleep when I heard a disturbing sound.

"Why do I hear running water?" I said. And, sure enough, it sounded exactly as if someone had left a faucet on in a steady pour. Immediately, we both thought of the pipes. With night time temps hovering between zero and ten for the past few days, it wasn't inconceivable that we'd had a pipe burst. I thought, Oh, please, let it just be Moosey peeing on the floor.

I leaned up and looked over the edge of the bed. In the low light from the night light in the hall, I could see Moose's little brown body directly beside the bed.

"Moose? Are you pottying on the floor?" I asked him. As I swung my legs out of the bed, Moose turned of his "faucet" and hauled ass for the back door. I followed and let him outside then went back to clean up the mess. I couldn't even be mad at him, because I knew he had probably tried to wake us up before succumbing to the pressure. And from the amount on the floor, his bladder had probably been at capacity.

We're pretty sure this was a one off event. Mostly, he's been sleeping through the night, so we think the days of having to get up with him three times are, at last, done.

Our New Family Member, the Third

A wise man once said: when a puppy piddles on the carpet, whose fault is it, the puppy's or its owner's? Answer: the owner's, because he's the one not paying attention to his puppy. That's paraphrasing, but we read something very similar on a puppy potty-training website, back when we were first trying to train Sadie. It's as irritating a statement as you're likely to find, but it's also true. Potty training a dog to "go" exclusively outside is a long and uric-acid soaked process that can drive you nigh onto insanity. Complicating the process further is that we refused to go the half-step route of first training to "go" on paper or floor diaper, opting for the whole hog "yer goin' outside or ye'd better get used to holdin' it" avenue.

It's the same process we used on Sadie, starting a year and a half back. We must have done a good job of it, too, because Sadie is completely awesome when it comes to whizzing exclusively outside. Point of fact, she's a pretty awesome dog all around, which we can see now that we have Moose (or Piddles McGillicuddy, as he's come to be known) as contrast. Whenever Sadie has to go "potty," she literally asks to go out; she comes and finds us wherever we are, and gives us an urgent-toned series of grunts and growls. That's our cue to say, "You need to go potty?" at which point she steps up the urgency of the growls. In the early days of this, we used to also have episodes of what we called "potty lying" in which the dog really just wanted to go outside to sniff or investigate the possibility of deer lurking in the yard and would use pottying as her ticket to be let out. This was annoying because at the time we didn't have our nifty wifi shock collar system in place and would have to accompany her into the cold using a leash to prevent her from tearing off into the night after said lurking deer. These days, though, she's so well-trained by her shock collar that she doesn't even have to wear the collar anymore and we completely trust her to stay in the yard and let her out whenever the mood strikes her.

As well trained as Sadie now is, we can't for the life of us remember what exactly we did to reach that level of perfection with her. How was it, for instance, that we were able to get her to verbalize her potty needs? We'd really like to know, because it seems silly to punish Moose for piddling in the house and yell at him to only go outside when he seemingly doesn't have any recourse for letting us know that he needs to go outside. So for the past few weeks, we've tried to remain vigilant for any signs that he needs to go and immediately let him out. Trouble is, he's a stealth-pisser and covert-crapper, capable of squeezing out some waste in seconds, usually choosing to do so in a room other than the one we're in and dashing back before we know he was even gone. Until about three days ago, we had not had even one single day without an accident in all the weeks he's been here. And I'm not convinced he even achieved that record feat, because I found and cold, old link in the guest bedroom two days ago, and who knows when he deposited that?

Fortunately, I think we're finally seeing the light at the end of Poop & Piddle Tunnel. While we have had some excretory indiscretions in recent days, they've all been of a solid variety, so he's either getting the message that the yard is where he needs to wee, or he's developing better bladder control. Maybe both. He's even begun to go to the back door when he needs to go, which makes us extremely happy. Now if we can only work on his verbalizing, we'll be good. As shiny and perfect as Sadie appears in this regard, in actuality it took her several months to achieve this state.

Meanwhile, Moose has been easier to train in other regards. He's actually sitting and waiting on command--at least most of the time--and is already shaking hands with enough regularity that it's nearing on-command level, too. He also fetches far better than Sadie, (who is perfectly willing to go get any item you throw, but will then only play keepaway with it); Moose actually brings things back, provided you don't tell him he's a good dog until he returns with them, otherwise he drops whatever it is and runs to be praised.

As much as we've hated having to be back in cleanup mode again, we're really digging Moose as a pup. He's a far less high-maintenance dog than Sadie was at that age and it's been a fun guessing game as to what sort of dog he really is. We keep telling him he'd better not be a damn little chow chow, but we'll probably survive okay, even if he is.

He and Sadie are great friends--except before she's had her coffee in the morning, when she tends to growl at him. Same goes for Avie kitty, who has wisely chosen to make friends with him while he's still tiny. They have lots of fun chasing one another around the house, with Avie running only until Moose gives up the chase, at which point she turns and slinks back in his vicinity to get his attention and start the game anew.

The other thing I'm trying to do with him is to take more pictures. We took lots of Sadie as a puppy, then a few more as an adolescent dog, but very few in between those stages and then adult. Got to get more in the bank before he loses his puppy cuteness. Everyone who sees him falls in love with him, even down to our vet. I've taken him in three times now for initial checkup and shots and each time the vet and her staff have trouble giving him back to me. This past visit, they even apologized that I had to wait around the waiting room for so long, because they didn't want to let him go. He's a charmer.

Our New Family Member, the Second

We did some research on Leonbergers to see if what we'd been sold was indeed what it was billed to be. Didn't really matter, of course, as he was the cutest puppy ever and we loved him no matter what his breed. However, we thought it would be nice to know if he was going to be as large as we hoped, or top out at largish medium dog like his big "sister."

Leonbergers, in addition to being a fairly rare breed in this country, have a diversity of appearance in both puppy and adult form, so much so that even with the similarities in coloration it was hard to say if Moose was a Leo, even only in part. Our vet was no help either, saying we just needed to pay attention to what physical characteristics he showed or developed and compare those to his alleged breed stats. Unfortunately, most of these (black muzzle, black tipped ears, white tip on the tail) also match a number of other breeds. And that tail was suspiciously curly. In fact, if not for his face, he had kind of a puggish sort of build, though no other pug features.

"Oh, he's probably a pug/German Shepherd half-breed," I suggested, much to the wife's dismay. She was already beginning to suspect him to be some kind of Shepherd/Chow combo.

"Don't do that near a chow," I said.

"What?" she understandably replied.

"Oh, I didn't tell you that story?" I said, referring to the fact that I've told her most of my stories at least once and usually thrice.

The story goes that back during my first junior year of college, I went with my friends Joe and Sujay to hang out in Atlanta for several days during spring break. (Side story: this was the very trip during which I composed and unleashed the second loudest and longest power-belch of my life, the now legendary I'M OUT OF SCHOOL belch, the recipe for which consisted of Sour Cream & Onion Pringles and generic Jitney Jungle brand Sprite. It was a belch worthy of an artistic grant.) Being poor college students, we stayed with Joe's elderly great aunt and went out via car or walked to the nearest Marta station, a couple miles away. During our initial hike to the Marta station, we were traveling down a sidewalk when we saw that ahead of us was a section of the sidewalk that was being regularly drenched by an overzealous yard sprinkler. In order to make it across the long stretch of moistened concrete without getting wet ourselves, we knew we would have to be swift of foot. And, seeing that the sprinkler stream was even then on a course back toward the sidewalk, we hoofed it quickly across. Now, what we didn't really notice was that ahead of us, beyond the moistened sidewalk, was a woman in her mid to late 30s walking a Chow. And, not having noticed her, we didn't take into account that three youths of indeterminate racial background (Sujay is east Indian, Joe has some Cherokee in him somewhere and I'm a squat, hairy, Franco/German honky) approaching at top speed would be the sort of thing that might cause her a bit of alarm. She gave us a fearful look, then, seeing that we weren't about to assault her, gave us an angry one.

"Don't do that near a chow!" she spat. Meanwhile, her dog was very calmly--some might say sleepily--paying us little mind, was barely bothering to sniff our air, let alone bark, and seemed the least-threatening beast any of us had ever encountered. While we quickly realized we should never have come running up behind her the way we did, her projection of viciousness onto that particular chow struck us as very funny and we spent the rest of the week--nay, the next several years--often repeating "Don't do that near a chow" whenever we were around each other.

I didn't much like the idea of Moose being a chow (you know, other than it would give me a constant source of reason for saying "Don't do that near a chow") but not because of any hatred of the breed. Mostly, I just don't like paying for one thing and getting something else. I was mostly content with assuming whoever had dumped Moose and his siblings off at theanimal shelter had known the parentage of the pups beforehand.

The wife, continued her image research online and was actually able to find pictures of German Shepherd puppies, chow puppies and German Shepherd/chow puppies that looked remarkably like Moose. His coloration is very German Shepherd, come to think of it, down to the light patches on his sides, (though Leonbergers often have this as well).

"He doesn't have a black or blue tongue," I countered to the chow argument. Turns out I was wrong on this, though only partially. Moose's tongue does have a blue spot on its tip, which the chow sites say begins to form on chow puppy tongues at about his age. However, the Leonberger sites say exactly the same thing as well, since Newfies--part of the Leonberger mix--can also have dark tongues. As of this writing we still don't know what the hell he is. We're pretty sure that whatever breed he is, he ain't part Saint. He's also a vocal force to be reckoned with and can emit the most entertaining growly sounds you'd ever care to hear and sometimes seems to argue with you, if you're not doing what he wants you to. And he often follows up these howls with a sharp bite.

And, of course, there is the matter of his leavings.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Our New Family Member, the First

Over the past few months, the wife and I have been talking about getting a second dog. Mostly, we're interested in this to help socialize our first dog, Sadie, when it comes to members of her species. Partly, though, the wife just wants a truly enormous dog and preferably a full blooded St. Bernard. As I've detailed at some point in the past, the wife likes St. Bernards and has wanted another for a while now. Sadie is allegedly part St. Bernard, but the other half of her is Border Collie (again, so we think) and that offsets the overall size and drool factors (some of us would say nicely) while amping up the intelligence, stubbornness and energy. It's a great mix, really, but the wife would still like nothing better than to get a "real" St. Bernard, cause Sadie seems to have topped out at only 70 pounds.

Three Sundays ago, as merely a theoretical discussion, we happened to bring up the topic of a potential future second dog over breakfast. We agreed that, again in theory, a second dog might be a good idea. At least one of us in the conversation, however, was of the opinion that discussions were about as far as the subject would take us for probably another few months. Then, an hour or so later, I was working at the computer when the wife called from the living room, saying, "You need to come see this." I found her seated before her laptop with the picture of a brown puppy with a black nose centered in its screen. The wife, you see, had decided to surf by a St. Bernard rescue page--which is how we originally found Sadie. What she'd found was a painfully cute puppy listed as a mix of St. Bernard and Leonberger and located what turned out to be a couple hours drive from us. Now, I'd not really heard of Leonberger before, outside of possibly seeing one on a dog show on Animal Planet one time. But they looked kind of cool and were supposed to be a mix of St. Bernard, Newfoundland and Great Pyrenees. In other words, a butt-ass large dog.

The wife called the humane society where the puppy was located and asked if he was still there. They said he wasn't, which was disappointing news until they backed up and clarified that he had been taken to an adoption fair for the afternoon and if he wasn't adopted there he would be taken by a lady in New York.

"How do we get to the adoption fair?" the wife asked.

A couple hours later, me, the wife and Sadie pulled up to the parking lot of a movie theater in Grundy, VA, where there was indeed an adoption fair in full swing. Before we could even leave the car, we spotted a young lady holding the very puppy we came to seek. He was even cuter in person. He was also the last of a litter of six, all of which had already been adopted. The wife held him for a few minutes and even carried him over to the car to see what Sadie's reaction would be. Sadie barked at him, of course, but she was barking at everything at that point. The new pooch was a little scared at this, but still very sweet and just ridiculously cute. I paid the $30 adoption fee and after a quick stop for a pre-trip potty break, we hit the road home.

Once in our own yard, it took Sadie a couple of hours to get used to the new guy. We weren't sure if she was considering whether or not he would be good to eat, for a while, because she began drooling. And, on occasion, she did try to squash him by collapsing her front half on top of him, pinning him wrestlig-style, or just mashing him with a paw. But after a brief period of nervousness around Sadie, the new puppy warmed up and began to play back, biting and barking with the best of them. His little voice sounded kind of hoarse and squeaky and we wondered if he had laryngitis from yipping away in his cage back at the pound.

While neither we nor the humane society knew how old he was, exactly, I was guessing from his size that he was around 6 or 7 weeks old. (We got Sadie at around 8 to 10 weeks. )

It took us several hours of brainstorming to come up with a name. We considered things like Leon, Louie, Grundy, and Pudding Head Jenkins. Eventually we decided to follow my family's longstanding tradition of giving animals a name and then calling them something else entirely (i.e. Boots = Bay, Luke = Boo, Winston Churchill: The Infinitely Bad Kitty = the Kitty or Hey Cat, Avie = Kissy, Sadie = Sadie Mac Dog or Mac or Say Say or Mactastic, etc.). So we named him Seamus, but exclusively call him "Moose" for short. It just seems to fit.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)