There was a time when we let the dogs loose in the house all of the time. We started putting Bug up after the series of accidents started several months ago. Then we stopped because he had been accident-free for so long. We just left him on the dog bed in the living room where we figured he would sleep until we arrived home.
Jack is trickier. He has separation anxiety. Oh, the life of dogs with special needs. He doesn't really have to be put up during the week's normal routine of Pmo leaving for work, me coming home, me going to bed and Pmo coming home. He's fairly calm then. But when Pmo and I leave together, the little guy wants to go with us so badly. Therefore, he is prone to acting out and leaving us "presents" if we don't take him with us.
So that's why Jack was caged last night and not Bug. We didn't think we had anything to worry about. We were only gone about 4 1/2 hours. Bug can make it 8 hours overnight no problem. But that's also when he's in his cage and not free to roam about. Did I mention we just had someone clean the carpet a few weeks ago?
The funniest part (besides me running the carpet cleaner at 1 o'clock in the morning) was Jack's reaction. When we let him loose, he had to walk past the pee spot to go outside one last time before bed. And he did so with such trepidation, as if walking past it would somehow lay the blame on him. I wish I would have taped his skulking down the hallway.
I hope this is not a setback for the Bugton and just poor judgment on our part. We'll probably go back to putting him up while we're gone. At least for awhile. He's due next week for his 3 month insulin checkup, where we leave him at the vet all day, so hopefully we'll get some sort of verdict then.
I've always called him "pea brain" because his head is so much smaller than the rest of his body. Now he's earned the title in a different sense.
