Doing Business

My best friend in college trained service dogs and by trained service dogs I mean raised them and taught them how to "do their business" on demand. I learned this shortly after we had become friends and I learned it in a very awkward manner.

One day when I was at her home I asked if I could use the restroom. Once I was in the restroom I could hear someone outside the bathroom window saying "do your business." At first I thought it was a joke and so I chuckled to myself but then the phrase was repeated over and over and over until I finished doing my business. It turns out that the dog and I happened to be doing to same thing at the same time and thankfully the encouragement was for the dog and not me. How embarrassing would that have been? Anyway...

For the past couple of weeks I have noticed that every day around 11:00 am Makaio wants to get back into his crib. I say this as if he can talk and requests to be taken to his crib but actually it has been a frustrating time of trying to figure out what is the correct translation f0r rolling around screaming and whining. After a couple of days of this morning time ritual I just started putting him in his crib and letting him figure it out.

He generally starts to calm down as we walk down the hallway to his bedroom and then once he is in his crib out come the smiles and laughter. I tried to convince myself that he just needed some alone time but when it came down to it my feelings were a little hurt that he would rather play in the crib than play with Kekoa and me.

I let this go on for a week or so and then I had to call my mother. I explained the situation to my mother and she said that maybe he just feels safe and comfortable in his crib. I graciously accepted this explanation but decided to pull out my detective cap and see if there was anything else that routinely happened in conjunction with these minor fits.

It only took me two days to figure out that when he was finally happy and ready to play nicely again I always had to change a poopy diaper. The third day confirmed my findings and it appears that Makaio views his crib as both a crib and a litter box.

So what do these two stories have in common? Nothing really unless you want to think of me putting him in his crib as permission to "do his business." The funny thing however is that somehow this all made sense when I started writing and now, well, you be the judge.