Free Don't Dump The Dog by Randy Grim

she—Bonnie—was pregnant. She was as skeletal as a dinosaur on top, but from the sides, as bloated as the Goodyear blimp. It was like looking at Nicole Richie while pregnant.
    For another, she delivered not one, not two, not five, but thirteen—that’s THIRTEEN, as in a baker’s dozen—puppies.
    For yet another, Bonnie developed mastitis, an infection in her boobies, so I became a surrogate mother dog and bottlefed the thirteen puppies ’round the clock for six weeks. In my sleep-deprived state, I often wondered if this would be my fate if I went to hell.
    And then, as the puppies grew, so grew their bladders—and my budget for air fresheners. You can read all the nightmarish details in The Man Who Talks to Dogs , but for purposes of this book, imagine the conversation that took place between a sleep-deprived, freaked-out gay guy with thirteen little leaking monsters to take care of and his totally unaccommodating veterinarian.
    “Why can’t you just take them, Doc?”
    “I sympathize with you, Randy, but you’re simply going to have to house-train the puppies while you find them homes. You should never have bred her in the first place.”
    “How dare you call me a breeder ... and I have to house-train all of them?”
    “First thing in the morning, every morning, take them outside ...”
    “But—”
    “... and when they urinate, praise them—”
    “But—”
    “... then, after they eat, wait half an hour and take them out again.”
    “But—”
    “It’s a matter of consistency.”
    If you are anything like me, the word consistency conjures up things like oil changes, sit-ups, and flossing, but nevertheless, you must face this ugly word when you get a new puppy. And if for some reason you have thirteen of them, it becomes, quite quickly, a profession. So I have no sympathy for those of you with just one .
    The first thing you must do is set up a schedule and stick to it, and remember this: A puppy has no muscle control until she’s about sixteen weeks old, so until then, subscribe to the New York Times daily and put it on the floor near the puppy. Seeing your puppy poop on politicians’ faces will, at worst, brighten your day.
    After that, a puppy must pee every hour that she is old in months, so if she’s three months old, she can only hold it for three hours. I started house-training Bonnie’s puppies when they were two months old, which meant that every two hours I had to take thirteen fat little balls of energy outside en masse. Only it didn’t work out so well, because as soon as I let them out of their pen in the basement, they scattered like bowling balls in every direction, and I spent half the day retrieving them and then cleaning up the messes they accomplished while I was retrieving someone else.
    So instead, I descended the basement stairs thirteen times, picking up a puppy thirteen times, ascending the stairs thirteen times, and taking a puppy outside thirteen times—and when they did their business, singing praises thirteen times. I figured out that during that time, I said “HALLELUJAH!” 4,680 times, which must earn me some sort of high status in the afterlife, i.e., every time a puppy did his thing Randy earned his wings.
    But after a while, I realized they were so attached to me that they’d follow me wherever I went, like ducklings follow a mother duck. I was so delirious from lack of sleep that it seemed to make sense for me to quack and flap, and they indeed learned that this was the signal for them to go outside.
    I’m a big believer in crate training. (See chapter 14.) Dogs usually won’t see a man about a horse in the space they sleep and eat in, and while puppies don’t get it at first, eventually they’ll come around. Just make sure the crate isn’t too big, because the puppy will do her stuff in a distant corner and not be bothered. So keep your puppy in a crate at night, and first thing every morning—before you brew your coffee, have a cigarette, or see a man