A Day “Off." Well, Sorta.

So, today I had the day off. No work commitments, no meetings, no lunch plans, no appointments, no nothin’.

Well, except for laundry, and dishes, and bill-paying, and bill-filing, and general clean-up around the house. 

Oh, and puppy duty, which is a constant these days. 

It’s all about timing.  Some days, I think I’m a genius at the timing thing.  Maggie Minx almost always piddles when we go out for a walk.  Several times.  Like she’s leaving doggie email for the other dogs to read that “Maggie. Was. Here.”

And when I triumphantly carry home a tiny little bag of poo, I think, Whew…hopefully, we won’t have any messes in the house today.

Most days, we don’t have any problems in the poo department.  But the piddle department? Well, that’s still a work in progress.  Sadly, those are the days I realize I’m far from genius.

I feel like we should have one of those big neon signs like they post in factories. You know the ones? It would read, “We Have Had No Accidents Here in X Number of Days.”  

The only problem is we haven’t even made it out of the single digits yet.

This, despite my carefully timed walks when I think she should go. And she does.  But apparently she still has some left, which is hard to believe in that miniscule body of hers.  And apparently, I haven’t quite broken the “Maggie code.” 

One of these days, she’ll be able to signal that she needs to use the, er, facilities and I’ll calmly put on her leash and we’ll saunter outside where she’ll do her business. And life will be good.

As it is, she makes these frantic whining noises and I think, “Oh, she has to go!” So we’d hurry outdoors, but all the stinker really wanted to do was roll around in the grass and see if any of her doggie friends were out and about.

Some of my neighbors, who are experts in the doggie arena, have well-behaved little canines who signal that they need to go out by gently tapping the bells that are affixed to the front door.

I thought that was genius…but I didn’t have anything around here that would work.

So off to the craft store I went. I bought some burlap and some jingle bells, and some decorations to spruce up my little banners so I wouldn’t object to seeing them affixed to the front and side doors.

This was a couple weeks ago and I was worried I wasted money on crafty supplies for a project that would never get made.  But, finally, today, I found the time to unholster my hot glue gun.  

Maggie cooperated by napping in her little bed beside me while I snipped and sewed and glued.  And, in the end, I had two pretty darn cute jingly banners. 

Now we just have to hope that Pavlov’s theory actually works. 

With Maggie Minx, there are no guarantees.