Pee-Mail

No, you’re not behind the times. Well, maybe you are. Who am I to judge? But pee-mail is not the next email, gmail, Hotmail, Facebook or Twitter.

I totally planned to steal the concept of pee-mail from a dog trainer’s website I once found (giving credit to said clever individual, of course), but in the course of Googling for the site, I found an Urban Dictionary entry for pee-mail, so it’s officially part of the language.

Yes, pee-mail is what your dog sends and checks every morning and night, plus a few times in between, sometimes leaving really long replies and sometimes just dropping a quick…drop. You know, the stuff he gets REALLY annoyed about if he doesn’t get to finish checking. The stuff that you—you human, you!—just don’t see the point of.

Walking a mile with the dog in the predawn darkness leaves me LOTS of time to think about this. And, really, it creates so many parallels to human behavior that my head is about to explode! So bear with me.

Now, there are some places the dog just goes. Lampposts still top the list for this—he doesn’t have to sniff, he knows everyone’s already had their say on it, he adds his two cents worth. Let’s call this Peebook. Whatever you’ve got, automatically spray it here.

Then he finds places that warrant a good sniff or two—nothing serious, but definitely worth attention. These must be prestigious, high-profile spots because, after he makes his statement, he goes back to check it. And again, even on the way back by the spot going home. Whatever he posted here, he’s proud of it. He wants to make sure it gets the attention it deserves.

Since he pretty much handles his, uh…more substantial works the same way, we’ll combine categories and call these “p-log posts.”

Then we run across some spots—oh, boy! He paces back and forth, quartering the areas and sniffing like mad. He circles, nose to the ground. He pees. He does it all again, squeezing out every last drop to make his point. Let’s call this pee-communication a “p-rant.” Let’s call the spot he’s focused on obliterating Kristen Stewart, gay marriage, Lance Armstrong, mompetition, any form of politics…whatever the flavor of the week may be.

And me, poor human? I’m stuck standing outside in the humid, bug-infested dark, bored out of my mind, waiting for a junkie who just can’t pull himself away from the information exchange.

So, hmmmm. Yeah, we humans could learn a little something. Especially we parents. The little people waiting patiently for us to swap “opinions” probably get a bit bored, impatient, and uncomfortable, too. And I imagine some of the folks we dump on just didn’t need it that day.

Thank goodness we humans have the option to leave our excrement in the toilet, in p-rivate, and choose to take our better selves out in public.