Deadline

November 18th was Brenda’s housetraining deadline. We had six weeks to not only get her to regularly get go to the bathroom outside, but to not go to the bathroom inside. Since housetraining and exercise are inextricably linked since because dogs exercise outside (except when they’re having swimming lessons), we also had to get Brenda comfortable walking on the streets of Manhattan. While she did well the first month or two she was with us, she had staged a mutiny over the summer and plopped on her belly as soon as her paws hit the pavement. History had shown that we could be outside for two or more hours and she wouldn’t go to the bathroom, so it was easy to pick up her flaccid body from the pavement and take her right home. We weren’t going to accomplish any peeing or pooping and she wasn’t going enjoy her walk so why bother? Her protesting had as much to do with the fact that she was getting her own way as it had to do with the blisters and soars she had developed on the pads of her feet over the coarse of the months she was with us. The hot sidewalk didn’t help and the muggy heat of NYC in the summer didn’t do anything for anybody’s mood. It was easy to give in and take her right back home. What was the point to do anything else? I was busy, tired, and had two other dogs, both of whom needed to walk outside and go to the bathroom there. I was also angry at Brenda, and at myself for getting into this situation. I had become attached to her, yet she was sucking my will to live. I was in some sort of abuse canine relationship.

Six weeks before November 18th, Belisa, Ben and I decided to set a housetraining goal. Things couldn’t stay status quo and while her aggression was the number one priority long term, the prospect of putting a moratorium on the no-holds-barred peeing and pooping inside made me giddy. A plan was put into action. Brenda would be taken outside between four and six times a day, an hour after meals, most of her walks would be given by either Belisa or Ben, her water would be limited and her freedom in the apartment would be nearly taken away or at the very least she’d be supervised one hundred percent of the time. No more carrying her down the stairs and an embargo on picking her up outside was enforced. We’d all also keep a detailed log of Brenda’s life. I kept track of her schedule and sent my wish list to Belisa every Sunday night. Belisa agreed to walk Brenda once a day. Her allotted time was usually in mid-afternoon, and only a few times did sheneed to walk Brenda during a time that was not on my wish list. Ben took the morning shift.

My neighbor, who is a locksmith, made me a copy of our building’s front door, and we stopped locking our apartment door. If anyone was going to walk into an apartment full of three pit bulls, they deserved to have anything they could steal. It wasn’t going to happen.

Once we got in the housetraining groove it was actually manageable. We quickly learned that Brenda was perfectly capable of holding urine for extra long durations. She just didn’t have to before now. We also learned that when she was physically prohibited from going to the bathroom inside, she started both peeing and pooping outside almost immediately. She also miraculously started walking outside, too. Perhaps it was because I was so close to giving up on her and I adopted a do-it-now-or-not-at-all attitude that she respected or, or because she was kept in a crate or tethered on a two-foot leash at all times inside, or maybe she somehow knew that I had purchased a children’s red wagon in order to cart her around.

From experience, I knew that if we could get her far enough away from the apartment she’d walk all the way back home without protest. I just couldn’t commit to carrying her blocks away each day. I also thought that if I could put a cute outfit on her and wheel her around people might start to pity Brenda instead of fear her. I was outbid a few times on eBay and then my online purchase of a new one was put on backorder. The day she started walking and actually looked like a normal dog doing it, I canceled the order. Saved me almost $80.

About three weeks into the training I started giving Brenda small amounts of free time, watching her constantly. She’d usually have an accident, but at least it was small puddles of urine since she was constantly emptying her bladder outside by this point. I think she pooped in the kitchen once during these early weeks (I don’t think I kept her outside long enough to empty her bowls that day), and had diarrhea on my bed later in the process because I accidentally fed her leftovers from Sadie’s breakfast that most likely had traces of 5HTP in it, a supplement we give to both Sadie and Porter twice a day to help them chill out. Make them less anxious. Take a little of the edge off. It goes right through Brenda’s poor system, though, and literally runs out the other end.

Ben and I spent the night of the housetraining deadline packing and cleaning for our trip to California the next night. We were going to Berkeley for Thanksgiving. Ben was in the kitchen making a huge vat of food for the dogs and so I put the baby gate up to protect him from Brenda and decided to give her a little bit of freedom---more to get her to stop barking incessantly (I think she knew something was going to happen soon and it unnerved her) than to test her bowl and bladder control. I actually didn’t even realize it was the deadline until after what happened next.

I was sitting at my desk taking care of some bills and going through piles of clutter, streamlining the workspace because first Belisa was going to stay in my apartment with all three dogs and then later in the week my friend Tracy was scheduled to dog sit Porter and Sadie while Belisa relocated to my friend Kathryn’s apartment for a few days with Brenda. I like to leave the apartment in a relatively clean state for my dog sitters. While cleaning, I noticed that Brenda was sitting at the front door patiently looking up at the doorknob. She had never asked to go outside before and so I jumped from my desk chair, grabbed a jacket, clipped on her leash and ran up to the roof. She peed and pooped almost immediately and I was ecstatic. She had actually asked to go to the bathroom. I felt accomplished. I ran downstairs and quickly wrote an email in which I bragged about the incident to both Belisa and Stacy. That’s when I noticed the date and assumed that we’d picked the right one, had stuck to our schedule and Brenda was trained. I decided to keep up the baby gate separating the kitchen and the rest of the apartment and thus keeping Ben safe, so Brenda could be free to roam and interact with me and the other two dogs.

Within the next twenty minutes or so, Brenda went to pee twice in the middle of the living room and once on my bed. I cried and cursed at her and was pissed at myself for thinking she was cured. She stayed tethered to her brown bed in the bedroom and I made myself a tequila and tonic made with the Cuervo Silver someone had donated to the last sidewalk sale we had to raise money for Brenda’s care.