This story contains adult material. If you are eating, especially if it’s something that lay on the floor for more than three seconds, you’ll want to stop.
As anyone who has had, or been had by, a senior dog (or senior human, because at a certain point, it’s been known to happen in our species, as well), you are aware that leakage can occur. This happened to me. Well, not to me personally, but to my dog, Bubbles.
The affected area is a two-foot diameter spot on the carpet at the corner of our bed, where Bubbles’ fanny goes to sleep each night, and which I refer to as The Superfund Site. I thought MyHusbandTheEngineer, who specializes in environmental work, would be pleased to have his very own toxic dump, but since it doesn’t qualify for federal funds, he turned the clean-up over to me.
It took us five months to housebreak Bubbles—as someone once said, “Poodles are hard to convince.” A while after replacing all the carpeting, I ran into a cleaning fellow who told me that he could identify where pets pottied by shining a blue light on the floor. I thought, well wouldn’t that be an entertaining evening—spelunking through the house to confirm that we had won the battle. And that’s when we discovered that Bubbles, as young as she was, leaked. It looked like the Milky Way.
You may be going, “Eeeeeew.” This may be of no interest to you now, but someday, you or someone close to you may leak. And if you/that person are not as cute as a poodle, you will need survival tactics so that you are not relegated to the garage or the backyard. We are all part of the animal kingdom, and the following techniques can be easily adapted for the human predicament. Plus, you will be able to speak authoritatively on the subject of incontinence at grand openings of rest homes. Or you can ignore these tips, and your friends won’t want to eat at your house anymore (and you won’t have to cook). Now you, too, can benefit from my years of research, experimentation…and ultimate failure to completely foil Bubbles’ behind. (Maybe you’re smarter than your dog’s behind.)
Phase I of the remediation plan was pills. With pills, you have to constantly up the ante, because the dog will say, “I know that since this is the only variable in my diet, there must be a catch, and if I don’t eat the Pill Popper, then next week it will be liverwurst, then bologna, then roast beef—the possibilities are endless.” So you will only get, say, every other pill down the dog’s throat until you realize you are being played.
Phase II: A moisture-proof throw. These come in three sizes: expensive, exorbitantly expensive, and “Seriously, do you want this to work?” I’m not saying Bubbles aimed for the unprotected part of the carpet, but the spot at the corner grew. I needed to cover every absorbent area at ground level in the bedroom. So I tried that transparent, adhesive runner that comes in a roll, a painter’s tarp, and a piece of linoleum. Not all at the same time, mind you, but over a period of months. Very long months over which it was determined that I was not as smart as my dog’s behind.
Phase III: Chemistry. During Phase I, I had purchased my own carpet cleaning machine. I went back to the store and bought several bottles of “Rug Doctor Enzyme Action Urine Eliminator Fast Acting! Stains & Odor Gone for Good!” If MyHusbandThe(Chemical)Engineer had accepted this challenge initially, we would have gotten from A to enZymes right away. But it was left to me to wade through it alone.
Let me just say this: we can live with the results. You can’t solve this problem; you can only mitigate it. Fortunately we don’t entertain others in the bedroom. This may seem like a lot of work for too little return. But just remember—it could happen to you (and I don’t mean your dog)…
