What a gorgeous day, from inside my warm snug home, I can look out the window and see how brightly the sun reflects off the snow. The sky is a brilliant blue instead of the depressing grey that has been up there for the last few days.

Miss Lilly, my four pound Yorkie, had not seen snow before. When I opened the door for her to go out, she started toward the open door, was hit by a cold wind with a few snowflakes in it and backed up and looked at me like I was crazy.

Luckily we’ve prepared for Lilly’s first winter and we’ve invested in an extra small puppy sweater, an extra small red puppy jacket and some booties. The first time we tried booties, she moved so strangely she couldn’t get where she wanted. They were a little too big and we ended up returning the first set. Then we found more sock-like booties. She can walk around in them but she raises her back legs way up high.

But even with all these adorable accessories, we knew there was a good chance she wouldn’t go out when she needed to, so we converted the downstairs shower into a puppy potty. We bought a piece of fake grass with drainage holes that fits right in the bottom of the shower. We hoped that because it looks and feels like grass, that she would know that she can do her business there. Unfortunately, it did not come that easy. The day it arrived, which happened to be the same day the winter decided to come full force, my man and I took turns sitting with her in the bathroom, knowing that she had to go. We kept feeding her treats and water and it was already well passed her normal routine potty break. The poor thing had to be bursting at the seams and she kept telling us that she needed to go out. She does this pawing thing to let us know.

Finally, after hours, I had given in to bring my laptop and watched Netflix in there. I’d watched three shows before finally that sweet little girl gave in and let her golden shower flow into her new grassy toilet. We were so excited, we gave her treats and pet her and told her over and over what a good girl she was, which must have been extremely confusing and she completely misinterpreted. She had had a few accidents in the house before and of course, she heard, “No, Lilly, not in the house.”  She must’ve had some harsher punishment in her prior home because when it would happen, she’d put her ears down and slink along the floor like she knew she was in trouble.  And now, here we are praising her for going to the bathroom inside the house.

Luckily, she is consistently performing her number ones on the grass but she has a looser interpretation for the number twos. Those, she only understood she can now perform in the house. Normally she does get them in front of some door and a few have made it to the grass but we are still working on it.

She used to get us up each night somewhere between 1am and 3am to go out. We were so excited that she would be able to do this without waking us up but now we shut our bedroom door so that she has to wake us up so we can take her to “her new out.”  During the day, we keep close eyes on her and when she starts smelling anything we jump up and ask her if she needs to go potty. Her new response to that is to go hide in her covered dog bed. When we take her out of there and put her in the downstairs bathroom, she goes to her grass and sits and looks at us until we give up and walk out of the room. She follows but we repeat the routine probably way more often than necessary. She is a super smart dog, so I am sure that it is our training skills that are lacking but I am confident that by the end of the week, we’ll be able to sleep through the night without having any surprises in the morning. Meanwhile, luckily she only produces small, manageable surprises.

The moral of the story, even the best days are full of shit.