Mason is Four Years Old!

My little doggy is no longer a baby, that’s for sure!

Four in dog years is supposedly 28 in human years, so I guess he’s an adult, but I’ve probably already told you a lot of the ways he has matured. 

Last week I was gone for eleven hours one day, which is a long time for a little almost ten-pound-pet to hold his tiny bladder, but he did. I didn’t plan to leave him that long and was concerned about his ability to hold it and hoped that he was make a mistake rather than be miserable.  I think probably he was asleep all day while I was gone though, which made it easier, because he held it, but still! I am proud of him. I’m going to tell you my favorite story that illustrates bathroom problems with small dogs. I knew before I got him of that problem because almost every person I talked to with a Yorkie or a Maltese or small Poodle told me that they are the most wonderful dogs in the world, even if they do pee all over the place.

Well, Mason never did pee all over the house, but I’ll tell you the story.

One day I took him with me to Lowe’s Home Improvement, which is a perfect store in my opinion because they allow dogs. My sister took her big dog Gabe there every day for a while when she was training him to be a therapy dog for working in elementary school classrooms to teach children to properly handle pets, because he needed to learn to be calm no matter how much people petted him and exclaimed over what a beautiful dog he is. Practically every person in the store admired him because he has a great golden plume of a tail. He is a gorgeous dog, and so well behaved!

So, anyway, in the parking lot I put Mason in the big red cart, and he was immediately up on his hind legs trying to see out, as we started in to Lowe’s.  Another potential store customer, noticing Mason’s paws and head trying to peer out, came over to admire him and tell me about his little Maltese, another small and also hypoallergenic dog. (You can see my article on that topic at littlethings.com). We told stories about how and why we got the dogs we did and how we love them and then continued our separate directions. 

A Little Later…

As I was diligently searching a Lowe’s aisle for deadbolt installation tools and parts, the same man passed me and remarked that Mason certainly wanted to get out of that cart because he was still straining to peer out.  (He had already been petted by numerous customers and was enjoying all the attention.) I simply said yes, he did, but I wasn’t planning to let him out of the cart.

The guy chuckled and said, “Yes, because you know he’ll have to look all over the store before he finds that rug way in the back that he wants to pee on.”

I laugh out loud every time I think about that, just as I did then because it is so dead on accurate!  Like I said before, Mason doesn’t pee all over the house, but the times he has, which are thankfully ever receding into the distant past, it was on a rug!