Pocket's persistent peeing problem perplexes Papa

Sigh.

I don’t know if you noticed, but at the top of our page we have been tracking how many days I have gone without an accident and how many times I went out to pee the day before. On Thursday it said “Pocket has gone three days without peeing and yesterday peed nine times.”

Friday I was doing so well. Then, just before bed, I jumped off my perch of pillows on the couch, and before I hit the floor I was already peeing. I don’t know how it happened. Sometimes I have no idea what is going on down there.

“Oh Pocket,” Daddy said. He has made, after two years, my housebreaking a priority in his life. We are in this together, him and I (although if we were really in this together he would be peeing on the floor along with me.)

I pee a lot: More than the average bear. It’s not that I have to pee all the time. When I’m crated I don’t pee. I can stay in our warm bed on weekends for ten hours without having to pee. I know where the no pee zones are. Not on the couch, the recliners, the blankets. But if I’m anywhere else I tend to let the pee hit the fan.

When I’m playing, tugging on a rope, or chewing a bone, and especially when I’m pursuing my little green ball, I leak, like an old pipe. I don’t even realize what I’m doing. Just bammo! Wetto!

Daddy developed a plan late last year. He got an egg time (who times an egg? What are they doing? Where are they going?) and set it for 20 minutes. When the bell went off, he took me outside to pee. It was like Pavlov’s dog, except instead of panting I pee.

And it worked super. I went a whole seven days without an accident. But then Daddy, thinking he’s some sort of Teddy Earnest, decided to experiment and extend the time. But I had become like the seven-minute abs guy. I was a twenty-minute pee-er. Not 25, not 30, 20, that’s the ticket.

Then the winter came, the snow, and the ice, and the cold. I wanted no part of the outside. I slipped into some very bad patterns. Mommy and Daddy tried pee pads, but if they had put them over 99% of the house I’d find that one percent.

In the spring Mommy and Daddy did everything the experts said. They took me out the same time every day, to the same spot, gave me a treat right away, gave me praise, and I’d come inside and pee ten minutes later.

After trying everything, and with the Red Sox season over, Daddy needed something else to obsess over and has gone back to the egg timer, which worked for three straight days until Friday. Then Saturday morning the buzzer went off, Daddy took me out, kept me on the grass telling me to “do my business,” which is the phrase that is supposed to make me pee, then decided to go back inside, and five minutes later, I peed. And today it snowed…..

I am trying to meet my Daddy half way. I am going to concentrate real hard to do good. But I need all my friends to send me the best puppy thoughts so please, help me out, send out good thoughts and help me treat the whole house like I do the bed.

I am going to learn to pee outside with your help.

Yes we can.