Dear Cesar Milan,
I'm having trouble with my calm assertive today. My beagle, Pekona, has been on my nerves lately. Well, for a few months now anyway. He's taken to eating the paper products out of the vanity garbage can. I understand he's a beagle and if he smells things that he thinks is food, he's gonna eat. He does the same thing with the kitty litter. It's disgusting, but we seemed to have solved that problem with a well positioned baby gate.
Here's a little history of our problem, probably unnecessary for you to evaluate our situation (you'll probably just say, more walks, remain calm and assertive), but I'm going to tell you anyway.
When we first got Pekona, we had your regular old vanity garbage can
He left it alone for the most part. Or if he went to get anything out of it, he did it discreetly enough that neither my wife or I noticed. But after a while, he must have gotten careless or terribly hungry, because one day, we found a hot mess in the bathroom of torn paper products and the garbage.
So we upgraded the garbage can to something with a top.
We chose one of those cans with a little step to lift the lid. This worked well. Pekona could get the lid open part way, but not able to get his whole nose into the can. This was fine, as long as we were vigilant and kept the garbage level low and remember to empty it twice a week.
Then our son, Sean Patrick was born, and the chores that we did routinely, became second fiddle. Eventually, the garbage piled up high enough for Pekona to tear out and make a mess. He also some how figured out a way to keep the lid open long enough for him to take EVERYTHING out of the garbage can.
Our next solution was to just keep the door to the bathroom closed. This worked fine, except for those time when we'd forget to close the door and he'd make his way in there and create a mess before we could stop him. As an added bonus, last summer we had my wife sister staying with us in the guest room and using the guest bathroom, two doors we normally keep closed. Both places had normal garbage cans. And my sister-in-law often forgot to close both doors, so there was messes in those places too. We ended up replacing those garbage cans with similar "step lid" types.
As a side note, when I'm asleep, I don't hear the baby cry immediately, but I jolt up in bed every time I hear the dogs collar jingle, or his nails on the tile. This, Cesar, is no way for a man to sleep.
Eventually, we forgot to close the bathroom door and there was another hot mess on the floor, so I took the imitative and got yet another type of garbage can.
This garbage can I thought would to do the trick. In order to open the top, you had to press down on the lid and a spring would force it open. Although Pekona is smart, I didn't think he'd be smart enough to pop open this lid.
Sadly, we never got the chance to find out if it was going to work. The garbage can was too big for the bathroom. There is a tight space between the toilet and sink. Too wide, and too tall. We resumed the method of closed door inhibit.
Until this past Thursday, this method worked fine, until we forgot to close the door again, but this time there was literally a paper trail from the garbage can in the bathroom across the floor of our bedroom to the blanket that Pekona was asleep on. I was done. First thing Friday morning, my wife and I went out and bought, yet another, garbage can.
This one, I think will do the trick. The lid is spring loaded so you have to push it in, which I think the dog will be able to do. However, this can has a smaller circular opening and is taller than the others, so I don't think he'll be able to get his snout in the hole, much less dig downwards into the garbage. Fingers crossed Cesar, fingers crossed.
What prompted this letter to you, was this morning, I became so frustrated with the dog, that I lost my calm assertive. It's been raining in L.A. for the last couple of days, and Pekona is such a princess, that even if you let him out to pee when it is not actively raining, the wet ground was enough for him to step out the door, pee on the side of the house where it was mostly dry under the eaves, and run back in the house. Needless to say, he never went out to poop.
Today, Saturday, it finally stopped raining, so I took Pekona out for a poop. Still being the princess that he is, he pooped on the dry driveway. But then he wouldn't stop squatting. He would walk in circles, squat, nothing would come out, then he'd walk some more and squat again. I was growing concerned, when it occurred to me that two days ago, he tore up the garbage can and probably has paper cork in his rear. I told my wife of my theory and she disagreed, thinking he was just constipated from not pooping for two days. We did agree that the best solution might be to take him on a walk to help loosen him up.
So I pulled on my sweat shirt and snapped the leash on the dog and off we went. Not 30 feet from the driveway did Pekona, "Cop a squat". A little bit of success, a small nugget. We resumed the walk and 30 feet later, he once again, "Copped a squat". This time, no dice. This is how the walk continued for another 200 or so feet, until I notice something hanging from his behind. I pulled out a poop baggie and wrapped it over my hand like a glove and proceeded to pull out a long browned balled up wad of paper.
Well, this proved my theory right, I think. Although the walk tempo didn't change, 30 feet plus "Cop a squat", he was successfully dropping doggy presents. By the end of the walk he was just pushing out bubbles and air. Gross.
Well Cesar, what do you think? Did I guess right? More walks? Redirect his energy else where? We'll try
Cesar we promise. But for now, I'm going to place my bet on the new garbage can.
And speaking of garbage cans, we've got a number of them stacked up in the corner that we don't use. Want one or two?
...
Apparently, this show has a big following. I've not got the battery power on my laptop to surf the internet to find the supposedly numerous blogs about the "Asia" shows (I'm sitting in the hotel lobby because the internet doesn't reach my room), but I was able to find the above posters off a site completely in Vietnamese.
