[yorkietalkjilly]

It's more natural for dogs to want to eliminate outdoors where animals can share their scent with other critters that 'read' scent messages transferred via urine, feces, plus it's just plain cleaner and more sanitary with all of the mess, wetness and odor left outdoors. We thankfully don't have to see, smell and clean up the products of their several-times daily eliminations, a job I hate, hate, hate. And worse still is coming home or waking mornings to a pad full of feces and soaked-in urine that have been congealing there fouling the air in the whole house!!! And forget what it looks like! Even holding your breath during clean-up, afterward the walls, floor-covering and furniture seem to take up the odors that I can smell despite whatever deodorizers used to 'freshen' the area.

Outdoor elimination is the only way I can manage. Don't know what I'll do when I get too old to manage a house and have to move into a small apartment one day - but I'll cross that bridge if and when I come to it. I can't imagine how hard it must be to have to take a dog 3 stories down to 'go' outside in a public area. I feel so sorry for doglovers dealing with that. But I know I'll have to as I can't imagine not having a dog, 3rd floor apartment or not!

Tibbe will hold himself for hours for the privilege of getting to leave all his wonderful odors outside for all the wild critters he imagines come around to admire and 'read' them, whatever they say. He so proudly backkicks in hopes of further spreading that message-laden scent of his that I couldn't deny him his right to share.

If it's raining really hard or snowing, he will hold out until it lightens up unless I insist and then he'll go on out and do his deed(s) even in the heaviest of downpours. After a good towel-off, it's all over and there's no yucky mess to see, smell and clean up and smell for an hour. Tibbe's trained to go around in circles several times on a clean towel to dry his feet in the Utility Porch and if he's very wet, I use another towel to dry his head and back. To me, this is much preferred to cleaning up the actual fecal material and urine-stained, wet, very stinky pads that then have to go in the toilet and/or outside trash - where they'll continue to stink unless you put them in impermeable plastic bags and pray they don't get punctured. Give me an outside-trained dog any day as long as I have a choice.