We had almost got the peepees and poopoos situation sorted, it was already accepted and understood by our little monster the new arrangement for these important matters while on board. She had finally accepted her situation of having to use the mat on the bow, and she was with a success rate of maybe 90% with the occasional miss when squatting into her position for the deal. We understand that is not necessarily easy to get such a big dog on a mat that is reasonably small when the boat is rocking at anchor, and someone decides to hold it until the very last minute.
But now that we got to this point, where we could just relax, I made a big mistake, the biggest of them all probably and now we are back to square one with this peepee and poopoo business.
I hung the mat incorrectly from the bow cleat whilst at anchor on a very rolly day with lots of swing, and the mat just disappeared without me noticing. My mistake!
I dived looking for it but we were anchored in 10-15 meters of water swinging to areas of around 20 meters depth and the mat was nowhere to be seen.
We quickly arranged for a second tray, a much longer rope to hold it and a new mat, but we couldn’t find a similar grass lookalike mat and now little princess is giving us the shits refusing to even step on it, even after putting a peepee and poopoo scented towel around it. She now totally refuses to go on the mat and will either pee right next to the mat because it’s on the right spot where the original was or hold it until she sees yellow or brown.
The frustration and guilt are reaching high levels around here.
UPDATE: Precisely one week later from this rant, Ella decided to start using the new mat!