Poopin' like a boss.

Many thanks for the kind words and suggestions about my dog Tralfaz and his drinking problem. For those joining our saga in progress: He refused to drink from his bowl, taking instead all his liquid from driveway puddles and ice cubes. Changing bowls, moving bowls, and every other suggestion we could find yielded no results. The boy was terrified and could not be coaxed, cajoled, treated, or threatened into drinking from the same bowl he'd used for more than a year. Result: Low energy, little pee, very little poop. Hey, you know what happens when you don't drink enough water. Same with him.

I'm happy to say that for the last week or so we have been out of the woods and into the bowl. And my boy has been poopin' like a boss. What kinda boss?

Serious kinda boss.

So what happened? Allow me to explain.

It all seemed to start when we had guests over. The doorbell rang; he went berserk; and while he was in that hyper state one of our guests accidentally kicked the water bowl. Not sure why this would disturb the dog---not like he had to clean it up---but ever after he was shy of the bowl, and within a couple of days he was avoiding it entirely.

What finally seemed to get him back to the dish was the brilliant Mrs. Key, who enticed the thirsty fellow with drops of water from her fingers. When he got close she held up water from his bowl in her cupped hands, which he lapped right up. Over time she (and later I) drew the cupped hands closer to the bowl until he was virtually drinking out of a cupped-hands bowl-within-a-bowl, and then he started forcing himself with audible effort to use the bowl himself occasionally. Now, a couple of weeks later, while there is periodic shyness about it, with the attendant whining, it is nothing like what it was. He drinks freely at all hours. Whee!

It took a lot of patience, a lot of resistance to the desire to solve the problem for him. Actually, we probably would have solved it for him if it were possible, but he had to find his own way. And it took time. Some things just take time, no matter how good or smart the effort is.

The L&T* wife also thinks it was just a phase, maybe more related to the lad moving into adult doghood than any water dish trauma. Could be. As I noted in the earlier post, though, he's always been timid of water, refusing to use the puppy pool I bought him. I don't think that's going to change, not even if I spring for a really good one.

But I might use it myself because it is AWESOME.

The point is, I'm glad he's able to drink water on his own again and is peein' and poopin' like a boss. And it is like a boss, because I'm the slob that has to clean up after him.

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*lovely & talented, but you knew that.