The Ghost

I baby sat my tenant's dog Mia, over the weekend. I've done it before, she is practically no trouble at all. Well, no trouble except for the fact that she is fifteen years old. In human years I think that's around one hundred. Mia is some kind of mixed breed. She was probably around sixty pounds in her prime, but now is basically a fur covered bag of bones. Mark calls her the ghost because she seems to simply appear in a room without making any noise. Anyway, it rained all weekend. And when I say it rained I'm talking about rain measured by the foot. Friday evening there was two feet of water in the street here. So you can imagine the problem I had with dogs that need to go outside to poop and pee at least four times a day. Chandler is okay with the rain once he is out in it. He will take his sweet time as long as I'm on the other end of the leash. If I just open the door and tell him to go out in the rain by himself, well if he could tell me to go screw myself, he would. Bette is less of a problem. She will pee and poop on her puppy pee pads once she sees that going outside could result in drowning. What I didn't know how to handle, was Mia and the rain. Did I mention that she is very old. She is so old that she wobbles when she walks. She bumps into things. On Saturday she fell into the dog water bowl twice, and on Sunday she locked Chandler and Bette in my office when she fell against a chair that then fell against the door, closing it on them. Mark said that he hopes she doesn't drop dead on us, and I agree. I wouldn't know what to do with her until her owner came home. Mark suggested the refrigerator in our tenant's apartment.

The problem with such an old and feeble dog on a rainy weekend like we had, is getting her to go potty outside. I would open the door and tell her to go out. Wherein she would step out the door onto the sidewalk and just stand there, in the rain, getting drenched. Thank goodness it finally stopped raining and my tenant came home and picked up Mia. She really is a very sweet dog and I would have no problem babysitting her again. Hopefully on a much drier weekend.