Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Trashy or Inventive?

It's been a while since I've posted. For years now, I've written every single day, whether it was in a journal, on a blog or some other outlet. But I had a little bout with un-motivation and have spent the past few months binge eating ice cream and wasting time reading endless celebrity gossip. Hundreds of dollars in personal training later, I'm paying for my recent choices, but I'm getting back to normal and my motivation to write seems to be following. Anyway, Griffin and Olivia have been healthy, have been to the park every day (sometimes twice a day) and are starting to countdown to camp- bulldog life has been normal.

Now that we're caught up, I've got to share my two recent inventions. "Inventions" or possibly, "reasons why my house is going to be featured on one of those shows where people judge trashy people's living conditions."

Invention 1- The Pee Sheet
Griffin sleeps 8 hours every night and doesn't have to pee, so I know he is physically able to go that amount of time without an accident. However, when I leave the house- for 2 hours or a whole day, he pees. To his credit, he pees in exactly the same place, as close as he could possibly get to the back door. It is ceramic tile, so it's easy to clean up and when I get home, he always hangs his head and looks remorseful for the puddle. So in terms of peeing inside my house, it's the best case scenario.

The problem is that the beautiful cabinet you see in this photo (which is only 2 years old and belongs to an entirely new kitchen I paid a lot of money for) is wood. And when Griffin pees, it's a BIG puddle. And the puddle soaks into the wood. So I've started using old sheets to soak up most of the pee and block the puddle from reaching the wood. Pee Sheet. I have 5 of them. It means that I have a load of absolutely disgusting urine soaked sheets to wash, but I feel like it is a worthwhile trade to protect my cabinet.

Invention #2- The Fence Blocker
 We recently got a new neighbor who has a big dog that barks a lot and is driving my dogs (especially Griffin) crazy. I'm not sure if Grif wants to be friends or get into a fight, but he is desperate to tunnel under the fence and meet the new guy.

This has caused two problems (besides annoying me with the barking, which is also a problem). The first issue is the mud. You can see in this photo that Griffin has scratched away all of he dirt. He spends as much time as I will let him in that one spot, whether the dog is outside or not. And then he comes inside, covered in dirt and tracks it all over my house. My floors look like, well, like they are covered in dirt- which they are, but that's not even the real problem.

The real issue with this situation is that Griffin has dug a little bit of a hole- not enough to get to the other dog, but enough to get most of his face under the fence. So now he looks like a fighting dog because his face has multiple cuts all over it from him repeatedly ramming it into the sharp edges of the metal fence. Apparently he doesn't feel pain. But he looks like an abuse victim and we haven't had a several hundred or thousand dollar trip to the vet recently, which just means that one is around the corner. And if I was a betting woman, I'm going to put my money on the fence+face situation being the reason.

This is a really heavy shelf that I used to have in my house and has been sitting in my garage. It has the L brackets on it which allows it to stand nicely and the heaviness of it means that a bulldog can bang against it, but not tip it over. It looks terrible and will look even worse once it gets muddy and wet, but for now, it's working. The dog was barking and Griffin slammed against it a few times and then just rested his chin on the edge of it.

My problems are solved for now. I'm open to suggestions if anyone has any less trashy-looking ideas. But until then, I'm feeling proud of my solutions.