I Gotta Pee

When I was in 5th grade, I became the proud owner of a Chinese Shar-Pei. His name was Mugsie Malone. He was, without a doubt, the best dog ever. Incredibly smart and very funny to watch. While Shar-Pei dogs are traditionally a little pretentious and "uppity", Muggs broke the rules and preferred to do things his way, like drink out of the toilet. Unfortunately, Muggs was just a few inches too short to successfully drink out of the toilet if the seat was down. As long as the seat was up he good to go. To rectify this situation, Muggs would bark at the toilet if someone was so insensitive to have left the seat in the down position. Eventually someone would respond to his barking and lift the lid.

A few years later Abby the black lab was brought into the mix. Abby quickly grew considerably larger than Mugsie. As a puppy she had learned (from watching Muggs) to bark at the toilet if the seat was down. Evidently it never dawned on Abby, once she was fully grown, that she could put her head through the hole in the toilet seat and get a drink of water. As a full grown adult Labrador, she refused to drink out the the toilet if the seat was down. Her entire life she stood in the bathroom and barked at the toilet until someone came to help her out.

I remembered all of this as my 4-yr-old went flying by me yelling at the top of her lungs, "I AM GOING TO THE BATHROOM. I GOTTA GO PEE".

We started this ritual when Lacy was having a difficult time potty training after she first arrived. Randy and I decided to make a BIG production of the fact that WE used the potty in hopes that she would get excited to do the same. It worked... Lacy is totally self sufficient and has been so for a considerable amount of time... but it leaves me wondering: will we have a 15yr old yelling "I GOTTA GO POTTY" as she walks to the bathroom?

Abby never managed to outgrow it.