Tupelo's Potentially Fatal Flaw

Tupelo is our Golden Corral dog. It's a long story, but suffice it to say that Travis did not want the mutt I saw outside out the local Mexican restaurant so I went the next day and found the same dog at Golden Corral. Sweet hillbilly mutt.

I found her that next day with the following logic: "If I were I dog, I think I would want to eat steak. Don't they have steak at Golden Corral?" There I found her...by the dumpster. My soul mate. Tupelo Honey Larsen.

I snatched her right up and put her in my back seat. The whole time my friend was warning me that she could bite. I knew she wouldn't bite me. I brought her home and sat in the backyard picking 32 ticks off of her and rubbing creams on her ant-bitten ears. I bathed her bony body and she just sat in my lap and let me pick at her and wash her all up. Just precious.

Nevertheless and from the beginning, Tupelo has been a thorn in Travis' side. Since we didn't know this dog, we kept her crated in our spare bedroom. The first night was fine. The second night was a fucking nightmare. She barked and cried and SCREAMED all night long. The third night we decided to crate her in our kitchen since it's a little farther from the bedroom and maybe we could sleep. That didn't work. At all. She just got more insistent that we should hear her.

But, my goodness, what a sweet, sweet dog she was every other second of the day. She would come to your side and lay her sweet head on your leg and just stare into your eyes as if she was repeating the same sentence over and over but emphasizing a different word each time.


I love you.
I love you.
I love you.

After three long nights, she broke us of our habit of crating her at night, but during the day, we felt like we didn't really have a choice. We worked long hours and she would be home alone all day. Alone with our other dog and cat who are not responsible AT ALL. So, like a normal human, we crated her and gave her treats through the bars and tried to make it as bearable as possible. But, whoa. We did not know how crazy this dog was nor how skinny she could make herself.

I came home and I found the new mutt out of the cage. She was really sweet to greet at the door, but I knew this was a bad sign. I walked to the back bedroom and I found a very strange sight. I saw the tray that would normally lie in the bottom of the crate. It was intact, except it was in the wrong place (read: not INSIDE the crate). Then I saw the crate. Mysteriously, it was also intact. It was like a rectangular cube with the bottom  slid out from underneath it. How in the hell is that even possible?

Tupelo taught us very quickly that she would not be crated ever again. But that's not even her potentially fatal flaw. That's just her stubborn personality. Her fatal flaw is something called spay incontinence. It's as awful as it sounds. Basically she leaks pee and doesn't know it. Her bladder muscle is weak after being spayed and it just leaks. I am a mommy. I understand how awful that can be to have a leaking problem. Travis, however, doesn't care. He just hates her even more than he did already.

Anyway, she takes medicine that is definitely helping, but now Travis is all uppity about how much money these medicines cost. I don't really see that there's an alternative to giving her the pills, but Travis keeps threatening to "go Ol' Yeller on her". So, if he does it, that would make her pee problem her fatal flaw for sure. Right now (and hopefully for a long time) it's just an annoying expense. I love that dog.