Week from Hell

The first week of Ben’s month-long stint in California was the worst of my life. Sure I missed him, but I also found it impossible to say no to anyone who asked me to do anything. Not only was I taking care of three high-maintenance dogs who can not be walked alone (more on that later), I took a gig walking three French Bull Dogs three times a day for someone while he was recovering from plastic surgery, edited my friend’s book (usually in the middle of the night), finished up three writing assignments and trained on average three dogs a day.

Porter, Sadie and Brenda cannot be walked at the same time, because Brenda attacks them both as soon as we step into the hall. Porter cowers at the sight of her snarl, but Sadie fights back, so even if Brenda was muzzled, I risk the chance of Sadie hurting her.

Once, tried to get them all down the stairs and to The Dog Run, where I swim them all for exercise and I cried the entire way. It was so stressful and dangerous that I would rather double the workload by walking Porter and Sadie and then walking Brenda by herself.

What actually happened by the end of the week was that I didn’t have time to take Brenda out and so she just pooped and peed all over the apartment at what seemed like a constant rate. Things are much better now, because Ben is back, I’ve learned to say no and we are aggressively trying to housetrain Brenda. I have my doubts, though. Just today I took her for a walk during which she peed many times and pooped once, so I decided to give her a little bit of freedom inside. She immediately peed in the kitchen. She loves peeing in the kitchen, but it’s the worst place for her to pee, because my apartment slopes into the middle of itself and so her urine spills underneath the butcher block and to the far wall. I have to move everything out of the way in order to clean it up. What a mess!