Ruby the Corgi Pup still has a puppy voice, but she believes herself to be fierce. Very fierce. So this morning when the religious pests showed up at the door, it was not WOOF WOOF WOOF! or ARF ARF ARF! or even the stately WARF! emitted by the Queen of the Universe or (thank heavens) Her Elevated Majesty's most enraged AAAARGHFFFF ROAR SNORT GARRRRGGGGGGHHHFFFFF!!!!!!, but RAH! RAH! RAH! RAH! RAH! RAH!

Like an especially shrill junior-high-school cheerleader.

:-D

The antibiotics our vet prescribed seem to be helping with the floor-watering challenge, although it surely isn't 100%. Two days passed without any puddles. Clearly, Pup indeed was house-trained, in the sense that she knew she was supposed to go outside. But just as clearly, she simply couldn't make it to the door, at least not most of the time.

She now will go to the back door and, if it's closed, go yaf! yaf! to elicit the requisite Open-Sesame effect. Usually. Sometimes.

So yesterday it was time for another vast floor-cleaning project. The entire house is paved with ceramic tile, thank heaven (smartest thing i ever did in the home improvement dept!). So, after cleaning up the dog hair and dust (of which we've had a-plenty during several days of stiff, dirty winds), I took the new Shark steam cleaner to the flooring.

My old Shark steam cleaner, which I guess was a first-generation model, was wonderful -- left the floors practically glowing in the dark. But this thing...ugh! I thought it hadn't worked so well the last time (which was my first use of the new one, after the beloved old one conked out), but blamed the streaking and generally poor performance on the world-record accumulation of filth.

This week, the floor wasn't that dirty, except for a bunch of missed puddle spots and little footprints where someone walked in it and then tracked it up and down the hall.

Start on the kitchen floor, and the contraption huffs and puffs and squirts steam and...and...and just does not do the job. It doesn't even squirchle up a spot of dripped coffee or tea, to say nothing of real dirt. It leaves the floor streaky and dull. By the time I've run it over the kitchen, the family room, and the dining room, its fancy cover thingie is barely even dirty. Cleaning that much space with the old one would have left the cover literally black with lifted-up grime.

Dang.

So I break out the string mop. I hate wet-mopping, because I suspect all it does is push the dirt around. But it's real clear the new steamer is doing nothing more than that.

Have to change out the mop head, because the one in place stinks of...you got it! Puppy pee! Luckily I bought a lifetime supply of mop heads at Costco and so had two of the things in the cleaning closet.

Mop the floors with Simple Green and vinegar, which works just fine.

In a closet, I find a place where Ruby at some point managed to sneak in and deposit a particularly ominous puddle. Dried to the floor, it was BROWN!

By and large her puddles have been clear -- so spring-water-clear that they're almost invisible unless the light hits them just right. Or your bare foot hits them.

She must have had blood in her urine at the time she emitted that one. If I'd seen it when she deposited it, I'd have tossed her in the car and driven her straight to the vet, appointment be damned.

It suggests the blood in the urine phenomenon is intermittent. So it may have been raw luck that it happened to show up on the day I did take her in.

So I scrub and scrub and scrub and scrub and scrub and scrub and scrub and scrub and....yeah. Finally, the floors are CLEAN! Cleaner than freaking CLEAN! The parfum de dog pee dissipates from the house, and I am happy. At last.

Two or three hours later, the dogs and I awake from a siesta (the highest and best use of a 100-degree afternoon). Released from her crate, Pup trots outside directly.

'Nother half-hour later, I walk up the hall toward the bedroom and SPLAT! Step in the middle of a nice cold,clear puddle!

Dang!!

Looks like she still can't make it from the bedroom to the back door without peeing.

This could be a problem...