The Urine Eliminator - CSI: Mr. Griffey

I was going to tell this story last week as another effort to show the diversity of products my wife and I buy on Amazon.com when she ordered a Hoover Steam Cleaner, but I had to delay.  See, we were on our way to my dad's house for Thanksgiving, and although he loves Oscar with a passion, he's suspicious of Mr. Griffey, and doesn't want the G-man messing up the house.  Coincidentally, unbeknownst to my dad, Griffey recently started peeing on the floor again, hence, the Steam Cleaner.  Obviously, since my dad reads the blog, I couldn't write about how we got a steam cleaner to clean up Griffey's soiled rugs.  Also, the blacklight didn't arrive until tonight.  Let me explain...

Mr. Griffey is super cute:

But he's devious.  Can't you see his scheming mind shining through those beady little black eyes?  When we fostered him in April, Griffey came wearing a diaper.  After only a week or so, we realized that he wasn't peeing in the house, so we let him roam free, freeballin', no diaper.  Things were going great until a few weeks ago when he started having setbacks.  Although we take him out frequently - 3 walks plus 2 pee breaks daily, he was still sneaking off to whizz on the carpet in one of several different rooms at seemingly random times.

It didn't seem like marking behavior, and the other problem is that we couldn't really tell when he was doing it.  Our carpets are all patterned, so we frequently wouldn't notice until after the fact, but once we started looking, we started finding more spots.   Mrs. Dynamite concluded that Griffey must have a urinary tract infection, and called the Vet, who said "sure, just bring us in a urine sample and we'll test it."

"Ummm, do you have any suggestions on how to collect the urine sample?"  Mrs. Dynamite inquired hopefully, but was met with the classic "catch it in a cup when he squats" response.

Sadly, I didn't have the camera handy when Mrs. Dynamite "collected" the sample, but she used a Tupperware lid and transferred it into a Ziploc baggie.  Who wants some leftovers at the Dynamite household!??!?  Guaranteed puppy pee-free Tupperware.

Anyway, in the meantime, in addition to the carpet vac, she'd ordered the Urine Eliminator kit from Rug Doctor, which consists of special pee-destroying enzymatic sprays, and a blacklight that you can use to FIND the pee, CSI style!  The blacklight turned out to be craptastic, so she ordered another, higher quality blacklight (from Amazon.com of course), which just came via UPS tonight.  We jacked 8 AA batteries into this thing, turned off all the lights, and hunted around the house for signs of Griffey's pee.  Yep - this was EXCITING for us!

We hit the jackpot in one of the guest bedrooms - finding several "spots" and even some puppy footprints where he'd stepped in his own pee and tracked it on the floor.  Too much information?  Hey - this is my life.    Griffey seemed like he KNEW we were onto him when we went into the guest bedroom in question! He slinked away.  

Then, in the middle of our blacklight pee-hunt, the Vet called us to say that Griffey did NOT have a UTI, but that the test isn't positively conclusive.  We'd kinda been hoping that it was a UTI, which made sense, as Griffey had been peeing when we got him, but had then stopped after a course of anti-biotics to treat his Lyme Disease.  Mrs. Dynamite had concluded that it all made sense, including the "skunk-like" aroma of the carpet pee spots, and that G-man must have another infection.  Sadly, the Vet couldn't confirm this...  We're gonna pick up some antibiotics for him anyway, just in case.

So, it's back to running around the house with the lights out, holding a blacklight like a cast-member of CSI: NH Woods, searching for the urine spots of a 12 lb dog and spraying enzymatic Urine Eliminator cleaner on the spots.

Sigh....

Gratuitous picture of Oscar, cause he's the best:

-KD

ps - Mr. Griffey has lost his free-ballin' privileges and is once again wearing a diaper.