Living with an old dog is a bit like living with a puppy, without all the exuberant energy and exercise demands. In other words, Monty is quiet, needs little to no exercise and really doesn’t know when or where he should be relieving himself. For a long time we simply cleaned up after his little accidents, and tried to head them off by putting him outside more often, but that was stressful, especially for my friend and neighbour, Maureen, (who often babysat Monty when we were out), since she’s on the upper floor, and the outside isn’t as easy to access. So, we bought some diapers. Yes, it’s humiliating for a dog to wear diapers. Not for him, but for us. He seems oblivious to whether they’re on him or not. Rinsing out diapers is irritating but at least you know where the pee will be and you won’t step in it by accident.
Now that we’re almost always at home I mostly let him go commando and I try to sense when he needs to go out. It works about 60% of the time. I really hate putting diapers on him because I hate to have him sit in a wet diaper, but sometimes I still do, just so I can ignore him and relax for a bit.
Oddly, he goes through the night without a single accident, which is a puzzle. Perhaps the instinct to keep his bed (which also happens to be my bed) clean is stronger than his need to pee. For a long time I didn’t even bother putting a diaper on him at night since there had been no problems. However, Maureen informed me that he always seems to need to go pee during the night when he stays at her place so I started to put a diaper on him, just in case. However, I got lazy and eventually stopped. I guess I preferred to play Russian Roulette, with Monty acting as gun and my bed acting as my head. Then one day I woke up a little later than usual, and found Monty in position to pee, so I, in a panic, quickly knocked him off his feet, which immediately stopped the flow, thank goodness. (Don’t worry, he fell over on the bed, and only looked a little insulted) I put him outside and no harm was really done. I washed the blankets.
So, for awhile I started putting diapers on him at night again but as no further accidents occurred, it seemed useless and sometimes I’d forget to put them on.
Last night, however, I woke up around 1:30 a.m. because Monty was getting up for a drink from his cup on his side table. (Yes, he has a cup and a side table. They used to be Dave’s but due to my insomnia and Dave’s snoring we’ve taken to sleeping in separate rooms. It’s better for both of us. Maybe that’s a subject for a future post, but I digress…) After that I lay awake for awhile, thinking of this and that and vaguely worrying that Monty didn’t have a diaper on. Sometimes at night it takes me awhile in my grogginess to identify what might be keeping me awake. Finally I thought I’d better put a diaper on him or I wouldn’t be able to sleep, so I got up to do that.
Waking Monty up from a sound sleep is like trying to wake up a rag doll full of sand. He makes cute little throat sounds of protest and opens his eyes, but his whole body drapes itself over my hands as I try to lift him up. He’s probably hoping I’m going to give up on my efforts to manhandle him into position to receive the diaper. On more than one occasion I’ve put the diaper on wrong so it wasn’t covering up his penis, so even in the dark middle of the night I was trying to make sure it was covering the right area. It took a little wrangling but I managed it.
I settled him back down and went back to my side of the bed and got cozy. Ten minutes later, Monty stood up and I could tell he needed to pee, because he made no move to drink from his glass but just stood there. Eye roll and sigh. Yes, he had a diaper on, but it’s only for emergencies. I don’t really want him to wet it. I got up and put him out, taking a moment to admire the moon and the stars, but quickly, since it’s effing freezing out these days. Soon we were back in bed, he deciding that lying up near my head was a good idea. Since he rarely wants to sleep close to me, I ignored his butt three inches from my face. The rest of the night though, was one of much moving around, changing sides, listening to sleep stories (I went through at least three) and getting up to pee. Monty slept on, oblivious to my gnashing of teeth. I started writing this post in my head, and believe me the ideas I had for it were epic. Instead of getting up to to write them down though, I just jotted down, “write post about Monty at night. Call it Russian Roulette”. I finally took a pill at 4:15 and fell back to sleep.
These days of Covid-19 are strange and sad in many ways, but, despite the irritations of dealing with my tiny, elderly canine friend, I’m grateful to have the time to let him sleep on my lap while I read a book and/or knit and can decide I’m not moving until he does. I’m content to be unhurried, to have no deadlines, to allow myself the luxury to be warmed by his unaware and innocent presence for as long as his clock keeps running.
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