Pets: A Christmas Pee Story

The day after Thanksgiving, bloated from our five-course meal and three-course dessert we rolled into the Tree farm and claimed our perfect tree. I noticed it looked a lot smaller wrapped up and entertained the thought that it might be too small. They loaded it into the trunk and away we went. My saint of a husband hefted it out of the car and into the stand in the corner of the living room.

My husband would say I wasn't a very good judge of height and that's why the treetop was bent over like an image from a Dr. Seuss book. I say it's because I didn't take the height of the stand into consideration when picking out the tree. After some minor dismemberment at the bottom, which, I guess, wasn't easy with the tree being trussed up in a fishnet stocking. I am basing that guess on the steady stream of muttering the saint was doing as he cut. We successfully maneuvered it into the stand with inches to spare at the ceiling.

There it stood wrapped up like three pounds of onions with its seductive lacey stocking, I could barely contain my excitement as I cut it loose. I staggered back to the coffee table and then pushed the coffee table back to the couch and finally just laid down on it as the branches swept out and the dised-members fell freely to the floor. I had no idea they made support fishnets in tree size!

There was some re-arranging and shifting and turning and finally it was free standing to be left so the branches could 'fall' over night. I'm not sure why they need to 'fall' over night but my Mom always did it and Mom is always right. As I stood considering what would happen if any parts of the tree did 'fall' over night I realized I was not admiring alone. Have you ever tried to get inside a dogs head? I think at this moment in time my dogs thoughts would have sounded something like this:

I can't believe my luck! Three weeks ago I had to chace after a fake rabbit, share my home with a bunch of dogs I didn't know and sleep in a crate three feet off the floor. Today I'm the only dog this giant kennel that doesn't have any crates, I don't touch walls when I stretch out and there is all this gray grass inside so I didn't need to go out in the cold to pee. I get treats all the time, no muzzle, no fake rabbits, continuous petting, I sleep on a cushion instead of shredded paper, there is always food in my dish and just when I thought it couldn't get any better they laid down some new blue grass and brought me a tree to pee on!

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's close, but I wasn't a fool. I knew he would be tempted. I blocked the entrance to the room before I went to bed. I woke Saturday to the most intense ammonia smell you can imagine and immediately understood... Someone had moved part of the blockade and Scotty; our newly adopted 90-pound greyhound, had christened our $60 Christmas tree.

My visions of a grand tree wallowed in a sloshing puddle of urine on the new rug. I was convinced my Christmas was ruined and dissolved into tears. My husband, the blockade breaking saint that he is, took the tree outside spayed it with cleaner and hosed it off. After a brief drying period he brought it back in, stood it in the stand and twisted it around until it looked like it was in the same position it had been in the night before.

The dog never showed any further interest. Perhaps if trees in the wild smelled like Lysol dogs wouldn't pee on them either. Perhaps he did understand English and knew exactly what all those names I yelled at him meant.

So what can you do to prevent your puppy/dog from christening your tree? You could start by washing it in Lysol before you bring it into the house! Seems like a pretty simple remedy that has a track record of working, at least for us.

There are spray products available in your pet store aimed at dulling your pet's need to mark its territory. I tried one around the border of my yard in an attempt to keep the free-range pets in our neighborhood at bay. Note: Make sure none of the free range pets are on you're property when you are spraying, this will eliminate any confusion on their part as to where they do and do not belong. An hour after the spraying my dog almost shot through the sliding glass door trying to get a cat on our deck. It must have been inside the boundary when I was spraying, oops. When I let him out the for the first time after the application he spent twenty minutes sniffing the sprayed areas and another 20 minutes re-spraying them with his own personal brand.

Please note these are not to be confused with the Bitter Apple products they sell. If your dog happens to be into chewing trees those products might save your tree from becoming doggie dental floss but they are not going to prevent him from peeing on it. In fact its chemical slushy smell might entice him to pee on it. Then there are those new age dogs, like the new generation of kids who think Sour Patch Kids are the greatest thing since Pixie Stix, that will find the pucker juice delectable.

Since most pets don't pee on houseplants, which look like trees and grass, it stands to reason the trigger is not visual so much as it is olfactory. To assault your dog' olfactory apparatus you may want to try dousing the tree with some of the cologne you bought your father for Christmas when you were ten. Don't worry your mom didn't throw it out; she hid it in the back of the linen closet. A heavy dose of Old Spice, High Karate, English Leather, or Aqua Velva may be just the ticket to punch out your dog's nose to penis coordination. A more contained version of this plan is to hang a bar of Irish Spring soap (its right behind the cologne) from the lower branches. It keeps deer off shrubs in winter so it might work with a dog the size of a small deer.

Consider blockading the tree by creating a perimeter of toys, furniture or even laundry baskets. Then consider blockading your husband in another part of the house so there won't be any breaching of the first blockade.

The oddest suggestion I found was to put a branch from the tree in the dog's dish at feeding time. Again feeding and peeing are not two things dogs connect with each other. You will never see a dog pee in it's own food, however, one dog's defecation is sometimes another dog's delicatessen. Think about that the next time you ask Fifi to 'give me kisses.' Yech.

On the more practical side consider traditional training devices. I've seen people shake a can of coins every time the dog went near the tree. I don't know if this makes them afraid of the tree or donation seekers outside of the local Wal Mart but it does seem to get their attention as much as anything that isn't food.

Whatever method you choose I wish you luck and offer up a prayer of thanks that my dog outgrew this habit by the following Christmas.