Vern and His Bathroom Habits!!

I take my dogs on walks every morning. Fudge knows to get her business over quickly and never disappoints me. Sure, she has a tendency to wait until we are well away from a trashcan, but no matter, I don’t mind carrying a poop bag if it means the deed is done.

Vern, on the other hand, takes forever to do his business and it gets to the point that I am following behind him chanting, “Vern, go poopy…Vern, go poopy….Vern, please go poopy….Vern, go poopy now….VERN, GO POOPY!” I sound like one of those stuck 45’s from back in the day.

The problem is I know he has to go and I don’t need to go into details, but he just won’t go until the stars align and the mood is perfect.

Believe me, it has nothing to do with modesty, because Vern has no problem licking himself when the mood strikes or squatting in the middle of training class, full of total strangers, if he gets the urge. No, it has something to do with finding the perfect spot and that takes him forever. He just gets so easily distracted and I find myself guarding him like a bear mama when I think he is going to go and actually shushing anyone that might disturb the moment. “I am sorry you had a bad day at work, but Vern is getting ready to go potty and I need you to be quiet until he is finished.” Once, my husband said that he hoped he never had a heart attack during one of Vern’s bowel movements because he knew he would get in trouble if any movement on his part caused Vern to freeze up. He said he could just hear me saying, “we were this close and then you had to start thrashing around.”

Today, the perfect spot was down the side of a hill, in a field of tall grass, full of who knows what critter and creatures. At least twice, he squatted and assumed the position and then stood up and looked at me like, “Never mind….false alarm…wrong spot.”

Hold on while I roll for a minute:

Could you remind me again why I am out here?

Apparently, the right spot was when my ankles were bending in ways I never knew they could on the side of this hill, and my arm holding the leash was stretched until I could feel the ball and socket in my shoulder starting to part ways. He finished and then I had to make my way down there and stick my hand into the tallest grass imaginable and hope that poop bag connected with something that was not breathing or had teeth.

Here I am getting down to the spot to collect Vern's poop!

Maybe I just need to tie him up somewhere, hand him a newspaper, and tell him I will be back in an hour.

It might be nice for Fudge to hear something besides, “Vern, just go already,” on our walks. Or just maybe, there is another solution. Has anybody tried out one of these?