More Dog Humor

Tonight I thought you might appreciate a break from work and wanted to talk a little bit about the idiosyncrasies of dogs. We have two dogs, one is a Yorkshire Terrier (about 6 pounds with a 600 pound mentality) and the other is more like a Silkie Terrier (about 12 pounds with matching personality). You have also probably heard on the news about the terrible rains that have been hitting California and Arizona this week.

What I learned this week is how much our dogs do not like rain. Living in the desert, you don't see much rain, and when you do, it stops after a few hours. It is relatively rare to have days and days of rain out here. Even when we are traveling around the country, we tend to not bump into more than a partial day of rain so I was very surprised with the reaction of the dogs to rain. Apparently these critters don't like to get wet. Well, not with rain. The Silkie loves to play with water coming out of a hose. She will get sopping wet and keep going until you turn the water off in the hose. The Yorkie has a bizarre love of the pool and will, during the summer, jump into the pool for no apparent reason.

So, imagine my frustration when I had to take them outside to go to the bathroom. Their bathroom is our backyard. The dogs would eagerly run out of the house, in anticipation of relieving themselves, but stop dead in their tracks before the end of the covered patio. With the rain outside, they would not step on the wet tile, nor would they wander off into the actual raindrops. Now we are not talking about a torrential downpour. I would not take them out in that for fear they would be washed away (I am used to dogs in the 50-100 pound range). All the dogs I had prior to now didn't seem to mind the weather, but then those dogs were outside dogs and only came inside in really bad weather.

Well, after trying to coerce the dogs into the rain (which included me standing in the rain trying to tell the dogs it was OK...), I got frustrated and let them back into the house. When it sounded like the rain let off a little bit more, I took them out again, only to encounter the same problems. Since I really HATE cleaning up after dogs in the house, there was no way I was going to allow them to mess the house up just because it was a little wet outside. So the next time we went outside and the dogs refused to go in the rain, I picked them both up under my arms and hiked about half way into the yard and deposited the dogs in the rain. They got back to the covered patio before I did.

So, I again grabbed both dogs, and once again and this time hiked to the farthest corner of the yard, and again deposited the dogs on the ground in the rain. This time the Yorkie got the idea and took care of business. The Silkie just stood there, staring at me, shivering. I refused to give in and stood there waiting for her to get the idea. Eventually (as I start getting soaked standing in the rain without an umbrella), she got the idea that she would be walked out in the rain and dropped in the yard until she took care of her business. So finally, I was able to get both dogs to take care of what should not have been an issue.

The next time they went out, we had the same exercise, they would not go unless I grabbed both of them and walked far into the yard. The Yorkie started learning and took care of business quickly, then realized it was kind of fun standing in the rain and started fooling around in the rain. Now, I got the Silkie to get her stuff done and she ran back to the covered patio, but now I had to chase the Yorkie around the yard, trying to convince him it was time to come in. Now the Yorkie will go out and get sopping wet in the rain, but the Silkie doesn't even like to get her feet wet. If we are going to get more extended rain, I think I am going to invest in rain boots for the Yorkie and hopefully fix her fear of wet feet.

The upshot of this whole mess is that I constantly got really wet trying to get the dogs to go to the bathroom. I really got the short end of the stick. If I wasn't so bull-headed about not being willing to clean up messes in the house, I would have managed to stay warm and dry. As it was, by the time I had warmed up and dried off, it was time to take those mutts back outside... Do they make dog umbrellas that you attach to the dogs? Perhaps the attachment for said umbrella is the tail? Hmmm, something to think about...

Until tomorrow...