Buying Stock in Paper Towels
Thursday, February 19th, 2009
If you’ve had puppies, you have likely thought, while house training puppy, whether jokingly or not, “I should buy stock in paper towels”. With all the piddle spots and piles of poop.. big or little.. at some point you feel like, enough already.
I’m having a week of it. We have two italian greyhound which are notoriously difficult to house train. I did my research before deciding on this breed, so I was well aware ahead of time what we were in for. And get it we have. At 1.5 years old and 10 mos old neither can claim to be fully house trained dogs.
Both of them will go out doors to potty. Our male Enzo will, oddly enough, even go out in the rain or freezing snowy weather. But he will also still do some business in the house. Our girl, Ella, will also go out in the snow but not the bitterly freezing weather and certainly not in the rain. Cleaning up after them has usually been a daily thing. Sometimes so much as having to strip the beds (can we say UGH!?). Sometimes buying stock in urine eliminators like Nature’s Miracle (our favorite to use) has slipped through out lips too. But so far nothing surpasses our use of paper towels as of late.
It’s gotten much worse lately. Why, you ask? For some reason, we thought adding two more dogs, er pups, at one time, to our family was a good idea.
One is 3.5 months and the other is 2.5 months. They love to go outside… not caring if is cold, rainy, muddy. The weather just doesn’t matter a bit to them. Their being Australian Shepherds (well, in this case, one is a toy, one is a mini) certainly aids in their love of the outdoors. Regardless of their time spent in the wonderful outdoors, it is not uncommon to let them in and turn around 5 minutes later and find a piddle spot.
This morning, I snatched up both of the babies (it’s my love word for the puppies) and herded everyone else (besides the four I’m talking about, we have a whippet and an aussie who are older and very house trained) out the door for potty time, depositing the little ones on the top step. They spent quite a bit of time playing, checking out the frozen ground, grass, and even, yes, doing some potty business, etc… came in and I found myself still cleaning up a couple of piddle spots. Ack!
Thank goodness our house is completely hard flooring. Old wood floor, linoleum, and the basement is still cement. Makes for easy cleaning – even more so if they would keep it on the floor all the time.
If we aren’t using paper towels to clean up the mess, we use wet wipes (those are expensive too, but get poop cleaned up really well), and I hate using clothe towels.. regardless of what we use, we use a lot of it. I’ll be happy when nicer weather is here and I can make myself commit to house training more seriously than just shooing them all out the back door.
It’s not like the little dogs won’t go outdoors to do potty business.. they just don’t confine it to outdoors. They will too, at their own initiative, use the potty pads I have laid out.. again, they don’t confine to that area.
When I trained the whippets many years ago, I was totally committed. I would get up in the middle of the night, bundle up and walk them on a leash around the yard. After 3 pregnancies (one a late loss), two of which producing a couple of energetic, mom-needy boys who home school.. plus my dealing with crohn’s disease.. I just don’t have that commitment like I did. But, I will get them trained. In the mean time.. I’ve decided I won’t be buying Sparkle brand paper towels any more. I might as well use a piece of writing paper for all the soaking up they do. So, what’s the best brand and what are the prices of their stock.
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