I am apologizing in advance to anyone besides Jackson's owners who read this but this was one crazy visit. To start from the very beginning, I am on my way to your house eating chips in my car left over from last night's Mexican food dinner.  I am hungry!  I get to your house, I open your door and there is Jackson.  This surprises me but I thought well, perhaps you're letting him roam.

So, I grab his leash and go to put it on and I notice that he is standing kind of funny.  I look down and he is peeing.  I actually had to look twice because my brain wasn't comprehending what I thought I was seeing.  But he was peeing.  I don't have his leash on yet so I put it on quickly and get him outside.  Needless to say, he peed just a little bit on the carpet, a far amount on the tile, and even more right outside your front door on the cement.  Poor guy....  I didn't get mad at him or scold him.  Once I got him outside I told him he was a good boy when he finished peeing out there.

At this point I'm thinking we need to go inside so I can clean up pee.  I used almost your whole roll of paper towels by the way.  Ask anyone in my family, I use paper towels like crazy... so sorry.  I couldn't find your trash can (I did later when I was re-arranging furniture... hopefully I'll get to that before I have to leave b/c I'm afraid I may have to finish this later) so I grabbed a trash bag from under the sink.

I've skipped a part:  when I walk into the kitchen or should I say when I TRY to walk into the kitchen to get the paper towels, there is an over-turned chair, food and water everywhere (from his water dish so it wasn't a ton of water, thank goodness.)  Now, I hate and I mean hate that I didn't think to take a picture.  I actually had my camera with me but it didn't occur to me until I'd cleaned it up.

Instead I grab the paper towels and clean up the pee.  Meanwhile, Jackson is in the house with his leash on just looking at me.  By this point he has laid down and is just watching.  I'm talking to him nicely b/c I don't want him to think he is in trouble but I am thinking he is probably confused because he has his leash on in the house and he hasn't gone for a walk yet, he barely stepped all 4 feet outside.

I take him for a walk.  He pees again and poops.  We probably only walked for about 10 minutes.  It was hot, his tongue was hanging out of his mouth, I knew I needed to clean up the kitchen and I try to figure out how to get him to stay in the kitchen.

We go back in and I clean the kitchen floor.  The dog food has gotten mushy at this point and it keeps getting on my hand.  I cleaned up his pee, got that on my hand and I didn't cring at all.  His mushy dog food touches my hand and I'm totally cringing..... explain that???  I give him more water (only about 1/2 a bowl in case it spills again and I refill his food.

I tried arranging the furniture so he couldn't get out but he jumped right up on the foot stool right in front of me and jumped right off so that wasn't keeping him in.  I grabbed another chair from the table, re-arranged the foot stool, the box, and the trash can and thought perhaps this will hold but I figured probably not.

I left the house.

I came back 5 minutes later and guess who greeted me at the door.... yep, your boy!  This was probably about the time I left you the 2nd message.  I wasn't sure what to do with him.  I didn't want to leave him out to destroy stuff or hurt himself so I decided to crate him.  I figured he wouldn't be in there for too long and he had peed & pooped.

Oh, I knew I left something out.  When I was looking for the paper towels when I was going to clean up the pee I noticed the recipe for the muffins so I looked at it.  If you remember long enough back when I started writing this post, I mentioned I was eating leftover chips in the car.  I was hungry so the recipe caught my attention.  Looked good, thought I'd ask you to email it to me.

It was when I was cleaning up the kitchen that I noticed the 2 muffins on the counter and the note... yes, I did eat one of the muffins.  Thank you so much.  See, Jackson was supposed to do all this stuff otherwise perhaps I wouldn't have spent any time in the kitchen and I might not have seen the recipe, the muffins or the note.

the end