The first pee of the day.
That was the instruction. Collect the first pee of the day.
The vet sent what appeared to be a standard urine specimen cup, complete with bright red screw cap lid, nicely sealed in plastic.
It’s the kind you expect to find at the doctor’s office.
To be clear: a doctor for humans. A pee cup for humans. The one you hold in one hand as you carefully aim the stream making sure to get the stream going before putting the cup into the stream and then removing it from the stream before you finish the stream.
I realize for women it’s different. There’s no holding two things at once.
But when one tries to collect water flowing from a hose, it requires holding both the cup and the hose.
It’s physics.
And there’s a whole lot of physics involved in collecting the first pee of the day from a dog.
A great deal of physics.
First, there is no way in hell you’re going to collect urine from a dog with that little cup. Not while he…yes, it’s a he…is going. The whole, leg up, nestled against the bush or tree thing…not going to happen.
Second, when you choose a larger receptacle, there’s the whole getting under the raised leg and finding the stream among the leaves of the bush. Because he always does his first pee at the same damn bush.
Third, there’s splash back.
So you have the complete picture, this is not happening in some suburban back yard. That would never work. This has to be done on a leash.
Advice to all: have someone else hold the leash.
Preferably not someone who will laugh uncontrollably as you stick your head far too close to parts of your dog you’d rather stay away from in order to see where you need to reach to place the plastic container under him and in midstream to collect the first damn pee of the day.
By the way, male dogs don’t pee downward.
They pee outward.
As the pee shoots, assuming you place the plastic container in the stream, the angle of the stream means you have to hold the container at a similar angle.
Did I mention splash back?
None of this had we planned for. Well, we planned for a larger receptacle. And my dear life partner of 26 years rightly suggested that gloves would be a good idea—still have plenty of pandemic stock. This is the same dear life partner who nearly peed herself watching me attempt and fail to collect the first pee of the day. Several times.
Not thinking as we left our urban high-rise for the collection effort, I had gloves, the sliced honey ham plastic container sans sliced honey ham. With lid. And the human sized specimen cup. All at the ready.
But not at the ready.
The dog goes as soon as he steps out of the building. Only the immediate entreaties of my dear life partner—did I mention how much she laughed at all this?—reminded me that I needed to be wearing the gloves before trying to collect the specimen.
“Jesus!” she said as she kept pulling on the dog to prevent him from going.
Meanwhile, the dog was confounded by all the changes in what is his normal morning pee routine.
I quickly donned a glove.
By quickly I mean I couldn’t get the damn thing on for a good twenty seconds rushing as I was to get one hand protected while trying to pry the lid from the sliced honey ham container sans sliced honey ham.
“Get on the other side,” she said. “He’s going to go over there, in that direction.”
Shit. Bushes.
We must have appeared an interesting sight to the dog walkers and others making their Saturday morning rounds on the thoroughfare that is Ocean Boulevard: she tugging the beast, me chasing behind the beast with the sliced honey ham container, me reaching around and under the beast, while the beast himself kept looking back at me with the “what the fuck are you doing back there” expression.
He reaches his bush.
I get into position.
Nothing.
“Fuck. Where’s the stream?”
My angle was wrong. Too low.
Background laughter.
“Ok, there it is.”
Until it wasn’t.
Not that I didn’t manage to collect some. It’s that what I collected didn’t last.
Did you know that when dogs finish peeing, they don’t put their leg down?
They step forward.
No sooner had I felt mild triumph at collecting something, the beast kicked the sliced honey ham container with the collected first pee of the day right out of my hand.
More laughter.
Shit.
“Get him on the grass,” I say a bit too loud. There were other dog walkers. Some probably from our building.
“Keep him away from the tree. It will be easier.”
The laughter continued. And attempts to suppress laughter only makes it worse.
“Keep him on one side!” I say as the beast goes right, then left.
The beast starts to set up for another go as I reach around and under.
He gives me the same “excuse me?” look. And decides he’ll wait.
Ah, another bush.
But this time, I know the angle. I know the height.
But I forget the “dogs step forward” part until he kicks the container out of my hand again.
By this time the poor attempt at stifled laughter is just background noise. The stares of others on the sidewalk, the dogs, their owners, did not even registered. I was on a mission.
Third time was the charm.
So, technically it wasn’t the first pee of the day. It was the third pee of the day. But it was the first pee of the morning. The vet would just have to deal with it.
I collected enough to fill half the human specimen cup. I considered wringing out the nylon glove I was wearing to see if that would fill the rest of the cup.
Remember splash back?
When we returned to the condo, after dropping off the specimen at the vet’s office a few blocks away, and being entertained by the beast’s sneezing fit with full-on screwed up facial expressions (as if we were going to buy the whole “the dog’s allergic to the vet” show), we regaled our sons with our adventures of the first pee of the day collection.
“I had to use the sliced honey ham container,” I told them. “So make sure the ham doesn’t touch the container when you put the ham back in.”
I couldn’t make out the shouts of disgust and horror that emanated from their room.
But it was my turn to laugh.