pet connection

This morning I got an e-mail from a reader with a 4 1/2 month-old puppy. The puppy, she said, was peeing in his crate while she was at work, and she wanted to know “how I can stop it.”

In other words: Every morning she was stuffing a puppy in a box and leaving him alone for 12 hours. And she wasn’t happy that when she came home he was in a puddle of pee.

I wasn’t happy that anyone had the idea it was OK to stuff a young dog in a box and abandon him for a day. I let her know that puppies generally can hold it their age in months (in this case, 4.5 months = 4.5 hours) and that she needed to either come home at lunch or hire a pet-sitter. Because although crate training is a great idea, if a puppy is spending all his time in a crate, well … that’s abuse.

“You pee more than twice a day, don’t you?” I wrote. “Have some mercy on your puppy.”

She wrote me back angrily, saying she wanted “help, not attitude.” And that she would never write me again, or recommend me to any one else.

And that makes me feel sorry … for her dog. Because anyone who honestly believes that it’s OK to treat a living thing the way she has and feels entitled to be angry with the animal when he has to have a normal biological function isn’t really ready to have a pet at all. Not to mention getting on my case because I had the nerve to point out the obvious — a puppy has to pee. Attitude? Yeah, I’ve got one. If you’re not going to care for a pet properly, don’t get one. That’s my attitude.

But then, I am always surprised at how people expect pets to be perfect as if by magic. Over the weekend if I had a nickle for every time someone at the dog show asked me, “Do they shed?” about my dogs I would have more than covered my entry fees and gas money. Do they shed? Well, duh. They have fur and they are alive. Of course, they shed. All dogs shed. Yes, all. Get over it.

People! Dogs pee, poop, vomit, destroy things, shed, bark, dig and pull you down the street on leash. Training and exercise can minimize these behaviors to the point where your dog is easier to live with, but your dog will never, ever, be stuffed-animal perfect. You’re not, are you?

Frankly, there are days — and this is clearly one of them — when it’s dangerous for me to answer my e-mail, because I have “attitude” coming out my ears. I want to tell all these people who want perfect pets without effort that their animals are honestly better off without them, and that instead of pulling out a credit card at the puppy-mill retail outlet they should have gone here and ordered the perfect pet of their choice.

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