Jam Will Never Poo Again!

Today we had our meeting at Countryside Mall.  So, since Jam was still feeling a little snakey about the backyard, I took him for a walk before the meeting.  We went around the block.  Wouldn't you know it, as soon as it looked like he had picked out a spot and was about to do something, the people who owned the house came out the front door (grandma and grandchild).  The little girl wanted to pet Jam.

All thoughts of poo immediately retreated, so to speak.  Jam was now more interested in the approaching people and I felt a vague need to take my plastic bag out of my pocket and wave it like a white flag as if to say, "See, if he had poo'ed in your yard, I would have picked it up.  I am a good neighbor."  Instead, I stood there awkwardly and looked a bit shifty eyed.

I moved Jam out to the sidewalk and said in a rather loud voice, "OK, Jam you need to sit." And then I made Jam sit and go down.  Jam is much more controlled in a down stay than in a sit.  When they got closer I explained about Jam's situation and that Jam needed to be calm in order to be petted.

Our new neighbor was AWESOME!  Everytime she approached, Jam would pop up and she would step back.  I would make him sit and down and then she would try again.  Until finally, he was calm.  By then her granddaughter had decided that Captain Crazypants was to crazy to pet and she didn't want to pet him.  But Annette did and Jam was very good.

I was so happy to meet such a nice neighbor.  And Jam was really tired out.  We were able to walk on two or three houses down before he had to poo.  Those neighbors stayed inside, thankfully.  

Guide dog puppy in training Jam sitting at food court table.

When we got to the meeting, Jam was anxious to meet everyone.  Fred thinks that if Jam is able to at least sniff all the dogs he is much better able to stay in the circle of acceptance than outside.  I don't know.  I just know that Jam had a good poo and was in the circle of acceptance and life was good.  I was even feeling very good about myself because just that morning I had cleaned the dogs' ears and part of the obedience was doing some of the tests from the AKC Canine Good Citizen Test, which includes having someone massage the ears and paws.  Little did I know another paw massage was coming up later (dum dum dum! foreshadowing!!).

Soon enough, AC Carolyn had sent us on our way and we were off to see what we could find on her list.  We did have one marking problem.  GRRR.  We have been avoiding all upright and vertical surfaces and keeping an eagle eye out for any slight veering to the left, but Jam got a quick one off on a planter.  I was able to clean it up quickly.  ShamWows are very good at cleaning up pee-sasters. Even small ones.  He never marks inside, but Malls are tricky and dogs can feel like they are outside.

Guide dog puppy in training Jam sitting in front of noisy arcade games.

We were still making our way around the mall with our older dog group when I happened to notice Jam's butt.  Frankly, I look at his butt a lot just to make sure he isn't holding anything back.  And sure enough, he had the gopher butt.

"Fred! He has to poo!"  Fred started to speed walk towards Sears with Jam.  Sylvia followed with Denny.  Fred and Jam were really going and made it to the doors without any problems.  They made it outside and Jam took the opportunity to water some more plants.  I pointed out a spot that was wider than the small median where they currently were and it was mostly mulch and a couple of flowers, so this would be a different type of ground on which to relieve himself.

Jam and Fred and I walked over to it and Jam hopped up the curve and started to twirl.  It seemed a bit odd to me, that a dog who is normally really concerned about things "being right snakey" would just hop up on some strange median without even looking at it.  But he did.  He didn't look or smell or even take into consideration that there might be little flowers that he was crushing (he wasn't).

He poo'ed and then he did a crazy thing.  He did a little leap, a leap high into the air and landed by Fred. Then he stuck out his back leg, which was now the color of night and started to shake it violently.  You see, Jam had twirled and stopped to poo on top of an anthill and those ants were extremely opposed to being covered in excrement.  Or having their house stopped up with big logs of well, you get my point. So to express their displeasure they had run screaming out of their hill and raced up his paw.

"Oh my God!" This is me, not taking any photos of his paw and swiping off ants. I can't understand those photojournalists who are the only ones on the scene when someone is going to set themselves on fire and they just stand there and shoot film.  Really?  Get a blanket and stop, drop and roll that crazy nutjob!

"Do you see his leg?" This is Fred, equally discomposed and frantic knocking ants off his paw as Jam is trying to bite the little bastards as they are trying to bite him.

I went in between his toes and looked for every little ant I could find and we got them all.

Now Jam will never poo again!

Update:  Jam has pooped.  I'm so relieved.  It seems our backyard is safe now and he is perfectly willing to walk around all parts of it once again.  He is also willing to relieve himself on any and all spots in the yard.  I'm glad I am not a mind reader.  I would think a mind reader would get trapped in the tangled mess that is Jam's brain.

What's in Your Diaper Bag?

All puppy raisers live in fear of having a pee-saster or poop-cident in a public place. We generally have different ways of dealing with this, mine is usually with an elevated heart rate and a fervant prayer for tile or formica flooring! We have had one puppy raiser go the unusual route of catching the poo in her hands before it hit the floor of a Bealls Department store, but most of us aren't that quick.

I, myself, have picked up a humping, about to poo, 50-pound puppy and run with him through a mall to the outside where he did then poo. No actually poo in the mall. Score one for puppy raiser! However, I was caught unaware as HRH (Her Royal Highness) Berkeley had a pee-saster in the library workroom in front of me, but like that other intrepid poo-catching puppy raiser, I reacted without thinking. If you are wondering how do you stop a peeing puppy? I'll let you in on a secret: You pick your puppy up by the booty.

So, HRH is in the middle of peeing and I leaned down and grabbed her back legs and hiked them into the air. It would be fair to say that without anthropomorphising her at all, that shock and astonishment were her most apparent facial expressions. She looked back at me and at her now airborn booty and then back at me quizzically. But, magically, she had stopped peeing (and let me tell you, this girl can PEE!). I was able to hustle her outside, let her finish peeing and then start the cleanup inside.

It has been my only inside pee-saster at school in two years. Pretty good overall. That being said, I obsessively carry a complete doggy diaper bag that should be able to deal with any emergency that presents itself. So, here's what I carry in my diaper bag. If you carry something different, please comment!

I have two diaper bags: a small one for just my purse.

This is a small bag that will fit in most purses and doesn't scream POO BAGS! It does, however, contain inside of it, as the next photo shows, poo bags, hand sanitizers, and two small shamwows and some ziploc bags.



Now, you may be asking, "Why a shamwow?" Have you seen HRH pee? Well, she did have a pee-saster in the mall during Christmas and thankfully the mall is patrolled endlessly by mall security looking for things to cleanup. As soon as a drop of her pee hit the marble floors, a small alarm went out and two janitors were dispatched to our location. Seriously! In 30 seconds of her peeing, we had a manager and janitors waiting to clean it up. I, of course, had already whipped out my purse diaper bag, which at the time was only equiped with paper towels. Four paper towels in a lake of pee were a sodden, nasty mess and I had just looked up with frantic eyes to Fred to get him to go get more paper towels when the manager said, "We've got this."

Ah, Christmas at the mall. There are some advantages. That got me thinking that paper towels suck when it comes to soaking up a pee-saster. You need something that really can soak up like 5X its weight in liquid: SHAMWOW!

I went straight to CVS. I bought the whole package, big and small. The big one is in my big diaper bag and the two smalls are in the small diaper bag. I also keep ziploc bags to put the sodden shamwows into because you can wash them and use them again.

My big bag is the blue SEGD bag and I have it filled with poo bags, a collapsible water dish, ziploc bags, the big shamwow and hand sanitizer in wipes and in a bottle. I have since been told of a puppy raiser who had a poop-cident involving runny poo on carpet (eep!), and Diane carries with her a spray bottle of stain and odor remover in her diaper bag. So I will be adding that to my diaper bag as well! (OCD I tell you!). Thank you Diane!


I like the wet ones for cleaning up after a pickup, but the bottle is nice to have if you are eating out and need to clean your hands or share with people at the table. I also learned at the walkathon that the Gulpy Pet Water Dispenser is considered to be one of the best and probably should replace my collapsible bowl. Tracey recommended the Gulpy. I'll be going out and finding one of these as well. They are nice because they won't release water until you squeeze them. No leaking!

I also carry a little first aid kit in the car at all times, just in case, but I don't keep it with the diaper bag. If you have any ideas for what to carry in the diaper bag or carry something that you find extremely useful, please comment!

The Queen Hears Queen and We Avoid a Huge Peesaster

On Friday, Fred, Her Royal Highness (HRH) Berkeley and I joined our friend and fellow puppy raiser Stephanie and her friend Nancy for dinner and a concert. We met up at Red Mesa Cantina in Downtown St. Pete.

I've mentioned the Cantina before, it is my favorite restaurant downtown and they had a wonderful early bird special dinner: drink, salad, entree and dessert for $14! It was quite a deal. I made the mistake of ordering the seafood mofongo. It was odd. But everyone else got something amazing. HRH was chilling under the table and nancy quite forgot she was there.

It was such a lovely night and Mahaffey was fairly close so we decided to walk over. It would give Madame Pees-alot a chance to relieve her bladder. As we approached a possible pee station, Fred took off her coat and coaxed her onto it. Nancy and Stephanie started to laugh.

"I don't think she likes it."

"I know. It's not grass." I shook my head. HRH was tip-toe-ing on the barking and rolling her eyes as if to say "Really? This is the best you can do?" By the time we did get to some grass she was so disgusted with us that she was to annoyed to pee.

We walked up to the counter to get out tickets accompanied by murmers of "Oh, look at the puppy in training. She's so cute." That always makes me smile.



Here we are before the concert looking lovely. I was a bit concerned that HRH might haul off and let loose a bark or two. She had to be removed from convocation that morning for barking during a piano recital. Very disappointing!

We proceeded into the Mahaffey. I took her with me into the ladies room where she was very good and she ended up surprising a couple of ladies, but not too badly. 8-) Then we headed out to our seats. That's when Fred heard it.

"What's that? It's not a guide dog is it?"

"No, it's a puppy in training."

"You know these people are really pushing the limits of what they should be doing!"

Fortunately Fred didn't tell me this until we were seated.

"They said WHAT?"



HRH took it without a peep. Here she is curled up under Fred's chair like a good girl. The concert was the Florida Orchestra performing selections from Queen, which having HRH watch Queen was quite ironic I thought. 8-) I was wondering what she would do when the music started and it wasn't much.

ROCK MUSIC: HRH sleeping.

She could have howled and no one would have heard it. At the intermission we went out and HRH started to pull a little on the leash, and Fred said,

"Peesaster on the way! Exit, Exit!"

So we hurridly made for the exit and then for the green, lush grass of the Mahaffey Center lawn overlooked by about 20 concert goers. Lit softly by the bare winter trees, HRH sighed and peed.

This was more like it.

The Grass Is Always Greener...Unless There Isn't Any Grass

One of the things we are supposed to do with our guide dog puppy is encourage her to pee on many different surfaces: grass, gravel, concrete, tarmac, rocks. Her Royal Highness (HRH) Berkeley, of course, was partial to grass.



It is so cool and delightful to the paw, so springy. Why would any smart puppy choose to relieve themselves on another inferior surface? One that is scratchy and might even be smelly or hot to the touch? No, no. Best to stick to that cool, green oasis of restroom quietude. Thus HRH lulled us into a false sense of variety.

When we would go to a planter that had bark, she would slip ever so slightly near the grassy part and pee near it. When we would walk her in the gravel, all ability to pee would desert her.

"Why, sir, I cannot! Heaven forfend! It is not within me." The puppy eyes would commence and we would give up.

Thus Arizona was a BIG SHOCK to HRH, mostly because Arizona is a desert. There aren't any grassy bits in Arizona. In fact, Mom and Dad's back yard look a lot like the photo of gravel below.



HRH wouldn't go for almost a day. She kept walking around and around on her toes as if somewhere, hidden in the rocks, there was some grass. Maybe, over here, in this corner. No? Perhaps by this bush? No?

By evening, she was crosslegged and pretty sure we were in hell.



"This is the most inauspicious place to spend the holidays. Fortunately, the hosts are kind and have padded beds on which I can lie."

In the end, the rocks won. But I'm pretty sure unless she is in the desert, she won't resort to using them. She is, after all, HRH.

To the Mall!

Yesterday, we went to our big monthly meeting and it was held at Countryside Mall. I learned that Malls are important exposures because the dogs are easily confused and have accidents in malls because the ceilings are so high and there is so much vegetation around that they think they are outdoors. So we are encouraged to take our pups to malls as often as we can (did you read that Fred?!). We were also told to bring lots of clean up supplies in anticipation of many accidents.



Here Fred and Her Royal Highness (HRH) practice the Under-Down command. Since we learned that SEGD has the dogs do this for meals we now have her eat all her meals from an under down command from a chair. She is very good at this command at 14 weeks. 8-) Amazing what motivation dinner will give her! Marcy was in charge of the meeting and had us go on a scavenger hunt. Puppies had the second floor only, but the bigger dogs had the 1st and 2nd floors. Countryside Mall has tile AND CARPET. GRRRR. Not good. As soon as the scavenger hunt started, the bowels let loose. Not HRH's, thanks be. At one point as we headed over to the Disney store there was a line of poops about seven cubits long with a couple of puppy raisers with bags and cleanup wipes getting rid of the evidence as fast as they could!

We kept HRH a bit back from the poo-line thinking that if she smelled it she might think it was ok to do it. So we hung out by Yankee Candle for a little bit, which stalled us from a good time in the scavenger hunt (this is the beginning of my excuse for not winning the hunt, can you tell? 8-)



The next stop was the Disney store. They were very nice. Startled, but friendly. Then we stopped to watch the ice skaters, because afterall, we wanted her to get the full mall experience (excuse #2!). While we were gazing at the ice rink, I noticed an older couple coming towards us. The man had his arm stuck out in front of him with his fingers open and grasping. He was several feet ahead of his wife. She was hurrying toward him and me, saying, "You can't touch her! You can't touch her!" He kept coming toward us with that one arm extended, rather like a zombie only without the lifeless heaving to and fro and dead eyes and, I suppose, the desire to eat human brains.

I stepped up to him and said, "I'm sorry, but she's got her coat on and she's working. You can't pet her now."

"See, I told you. You can't pet them. They are working." He seemed very disappointed.

I tried to mollify the situation. "She is very cute though in her coat, isn't she? She's hard to resist. We're having a meeting in the mall, so you will see lots of us morning."



Our next stop was Build a Bear. Fred was afraid HRH would go nuts and ravage the stuffed animals so he waited outside with her. Inside, the saleslady told me a sweet story of a blind person and their guide dog who came in to get another build a bear. The guide dog had torn it up. She said the dog seemed very sad and contrite about it.

We have had no word on Bingo (or Jim or Rob!) so I asked Marcy to check for us. It's been 5 weeks and we are a little nuts wondering what has happened to him. She said she would check and let us know. She had gotten some news on x-rays and would send us an email.



After the meeting we went to lunch. HRH was so worn out that she passed out under the table. That was nice.

Princess Pees-a-lot

Her Royal Highness Berkeley often goes out to the backyard to contemplate the zen of being. I've caught her on more than one occasion trying to eat the water lilies. Fred has even stopped her and had a frog pop out of her mouth, so our little Queen of all she surveys is actively searching for prince charming it seems (or warning him off! Don't try for any kisses here, buster. I will eat you with a spoon.).

Who knows the mind of royalty? Not I, evidently. Take yesterday, for example. I live in constant fear of a pee-saster. Yes, I said it. I can handle tile and linolium floors. It's the carpeted venues that freak me out. That's when I look at little Miss Tiny Bladder and think, oh my. She will do anything.

She's pretty good when we tell her to busy busy and yet, there is that unreasonable fear that the nap under the table will result in a pee-saster on our way out the door of the restaurant. Is she slowing down to sniff or something else, something more pee-worthy? That's when our blood speeds up a little bit, the heart beats a few times faster. Is my face flushed?

Did you know that Best Buy is COMPLETELY CARPETED? Did you also know that there are 100s of Best Buy employees stationed at nearly every other aisle!? And if you bring a really cute little 12-week old guide dog puppy into their store THEY WILL ALL STARE AT YOU LIKE YOU ARE CHOCOLATE?

It's true. Like chocolate. So I walked HRH very carefully, and even though Jennifer the trainer says to keep our eyes up, I couldn't help but be on the lookout out for the pee squat. It was CARPET! A puppy raiser told me she had been able to catch her pup's poo as it came out (now that is so OMG incredible I can't even conceive it!) yesterday at a department store. That wouldn't work with a pee-saster. So I had one eye on HRH, one eye on the Best Buy spies and one eye out for Fred who had disappeared and left me to wander the carpeted aisles. I figured I was safe if she was laying down. She had never actually peed while laying down. That I knew of anyway.



"Fred! Did you find the air conditioner?" Evidently, our old airconditioner was screaming in agony in the guest house and we had never heard it. Time for a new air conditioner.

"Yes." Fred is a man of few words. "Great. I'll see you at the car."

Evidently, royalty don't have pee-sasters. At least not at Best Buy with 100s of employees looking on.