Totally exasperated!

I was mentally and physically exhausted and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Day after day, it was the same thing. I would come into the living room and find a not-so-lovely gift from my little boy.

I’m just glad I didn’t step in it. But seriously, I was at my wit’s end. Because I didn’t know what else to do. I had read all the books and listened to all the experts. However, none of it was working.

I hated to have to resort to spanking. But I was running out of options as well as patience.

In case you’re wondering who I’m talking about, it’s not a human being. Although, he thought he was most of the time. It was my 2-month old Pomapoo puppy, Buster Brown Price.

I mean, it really wasn’t his fault that he was pooping in the house. The fact he had a nose for sniffing out an unpleasant odor was the problem. Because the former owner’s pooch left his share of untidy messes on the living room rug.

Ergo, he was only “popping a squat” where he thought it appropriate. How could I punish him for that? Unfortunately, that’s the only thing that worked in the end.

When my wife Sharon decided — with some fast talking from her nephew Justin — to buy a puppy after two large canines murdered one of her cats, she stated she would do the potty training before school started.

That was the other reason we had to get our puppy by the end of July 2010. Teachers had to be back in the classroom by mid-August. So that gave my wife only two weeks to teach her newest pupil the finer points of doing its business outdoors.

Well… she failed miserably. I just hope she had better luck with her first graders. Because, unfortunately, some of them weren’t potty trained either.

The underlying reason why I felt Buster wasn’t potty trained by the time Sharon went back to school was the fact there were too many distractions.

Three days after we brought our little bundle of joy home from Honey Brook, Pa., my wife’s sister and her family, descended upon our home like a nuclear explosion for a weeklong visit.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, when the loud and sometimes obnoxious relatives left, the guys came to put new flooring in our dining room, where the back door of the house was located.

So by the time Sharon returned to school, it was like starting from scratch again. But not seeing any way around it, I was determined to succeed where my wife could not.

My new mission began the morning my wife left to begin a brand new school year. I started by taking Buster outside every 15 minutes and gradually extended it to a half hour.

When we prolonged it to an hour, I felt like I was beginning to make some progress. But then the little fella would slip up and “do a doody” in the living room.

Just when I thought I was beginning to make some headway, it was back to square one. Buster did great for a couple of days at a time; but he would inevitably revert back to the baby stage.

To make matters worse, Buster’s unpleasant surprises weren’t the only thing I had to deal with. I was ready to annihilate the father-son duo putting the new hardwood flooring in our dining room.

They had completely taken over the back porch with their electric wood saw along with a plethora of tools as well as nails, wood chips and sawdust.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, they left all their paraphernalia sit on our back porch for the duration of the three-day project that, unfortunately, turned into a week.

Do you think they could have cleaned up at the end of each work day? That would be asking too much, now wouldn’t it? As if I didn’t already have enough on my plate, I had to clean up after two grown men that, in my opinion, needed a good swift kick in the pants. I didn’t want my little puppy getting into all that mess and possibly cutting his tiny paws.

Do you remember me saying the back door was off the dining room that was in the process of getting a facelift? Well, since I couldn’t take Buster out that door, my only other option was the door off the kitchen which led to the side porch.

The only problem was a set of steps leading to the front of the house and a busy thoroughfare. Fortunately, I had the forethought to screw a sizable piece of lattice at the top of the stairway, so my puppy wouldn’t end up as road kill.

The next obstacle my puppy and I encountered was the screen from the storm door laying sideways to block off the side porch from the back deck. We placed it there for those times we let Buster roam around on the back porch.

The last and most aggravating difficulty was the backyard. Although it was fenced in, the chain-link was over 30 years old with many spots for a tiny puppy to squeeze through.

This was a point of contention between my wife and I when contemplating the purchase of our new addition. She refused to wait an additional three months when we replaced a portion of the fence and shored up all possible escape routes. So I had to put a leash on Buster every time we went outside.

But all those frustrations faded away when Buster finally learned and understood the words “pee pee” and “poo poo.”

I was even more thrilled that only after a couple scoldings with a newspaper and putting his face to his unwelcome gifts, my baby boy finally stopped all that foolishness and told me when he had to go potty.

Success at last!

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By Mark S. Price

Contributing columnist

Mark S. Price is a former city government/county education reporter for The Sampson Independent. He currently resides in Clinton.