Dogs and Halfway Measures

Sometimes I catch myself in what seems like a peculiarly male sort of idiocy, in which the actions available to me are either all one thing or all the other and neither is desirable. No really earth-shaking examples come to mind while I'm waiting for the first cup to brew, but I think you know what I mean.

The incident that brings it up this morning involves a dilemma I've been struggling with for a few weeks now. For years, it was the custom that the very first thing I do upon becoming more-or-less vertical in the morning is open the door and let all the dogs out so they can do their business. In fact last summer, since the bugs never got bad, I just bungeed the door open and the boys slept in the yard if they wanted to. But Magnus and Fritz seemed to have a moderating influence on the younger dogs and that influence is, alas, no longer present. This spring Little Bear became reluctant to come back in after I released him, and I couldn't trust him to stick around. In fact sometimes he showed up at the neighbors at Oh Dark Thirty, and that's just unacceptable. Till he grows out of that, LB can't be allowed outside unsupervised or unrestrained.

Now, LB has a bladder of Magnusesque proportions. I swear that boy could fill a jacuzzi first thing in the morning, not that you'd want him to. So he really can wait till a decent hour, when we're either gearing up for walky time or headed for Gitmo. But that doesn't mean he likes it. I tried putting him on his tie-out cable first thing, but he won't go while he's cabled-up unless the alternative is just exploding like a Jihadi with a Semtex belt and a yen for 72 virgins.

This morning he obediently stood aside and let Ghost go out alone, but then pestered me without mercy. I like to stay in the warm lair till I'm damned good and ready to go outside, which at a minimum means I'm fully-dressed, fed and coffeed-up - but then I know how to use the toilet. He kept putting his chin on my lap and rolling his little brown eyes at me - not being obnoxious, but conveying an unmistakable request. So I figured, well, it won't kill me to stumble around the yard for a few minutes as long as he comes right back inside.

He seemed okay with that compromise. So we're going to give that a try for a while.