Pee Pee + Mattress = Not Good

**Update: See this post for how we actually cleaned the mattress.**

We almost had a dead dog on our hands the other day. Wait, let me re-phrase that. I almost caused my dog to be dead the other day. Let me explain.

You guys know I love my dogs. But they, admittedly, have taken a back seat to Chickster, and rightfully so. I am unable to exercise them daily, so I know they are not getting the activity they need. They have been real troopers, and have put up with this new addition to our family very well. They do have their moments, though, when you can see the wheels turning. Sometimes when they look at him, their eyes are saying, "Did you keep the receipt for this thing?" or "When is this kid leaving?" The other day was one such day.

Chickster and I had been having a good day. We'd slept decently well the night before, he'd done ok at napping, and our day was coming to a close. I'd been somewhat productive - I was in the process of changing the sheets on the bed and doing other laundry. Chickster had been laying on our bare mattress on a blanket while I folded clothes, blowing all sorts of spit bubbles at me. It was time for his late afternoon nap and time for me to start getting dinner together. I left my room to go put Chickster down for a nap. A few minutes later, I went back in to get the laundry baskets. That's when I saw it.

There was a giant yellow spot on my bed. On my bare mattress. As much as I was hoping it was the waning light playing tricks on my eyes, it wasn't. It was pee. Dog pee. And it was right next to the spot where Chickster had been laying. And no, it wasn't a nice little roundish puddle-spot of pee or a little sprinkle. It was a long, comma shape that went from the edge of the mattress diagonally toward the middle, cutting a wide swath in my cream-colored mattress. This was no little tinkle or a quick squirt. This was a full-on let 'er rip and unload.

I lost it.

Yelling at the dog wasn't an option for two reasons: Sleeping baby, and the dog would've had no idea why I was yelling at him anyway. So I called Husband at work. We hadn't talked all day, and later I felt bad that the first thing I said to him since he left for work was was, "I'm about to lose my mind!" I hysterically began to babble about the now fully soaked-in and absorbed giant yellow comma of pee on our mattress, and how in the world were we supposed to clean that up, and I had enough of Argus peeing on things, and he wasn't supposed to be on the bed anyway and what if Chickster had still been laying there and I had just gone to the bathroom or something? Husband calmed me down and began to search the internet for a way to clean the mattress. Surprisingly, there are a lot of websites with suggestions. Who knew? Anyway, he agreed to pick up the needed supplies on his way home from work, and I agreed not to strangle Argus.

Meanwhile, dinner still had to be fixed, and there wasn't a whole lot I could do until Husband got home with the mattress cleaning stuff, so I fixed dinner, and of course, Chickster woke up from his nap and needed his own pee pee issues taken care of. So, Husband arrived home and we ate and commenced the mattress salvaging.

Yeah, I know that little kids pee in the bed all the time. I'm sure it happened to our mattresses a lot when we were growing up, and I really don't remember Mom going to any great lengths to clean the mattresses. But that's what those water-resistant mattress covers and oh, I dunno, sheet plastic are for. But you're prepared for those instances - you expect that a four year old might occasionally wet the bed. I hadn't been planning on regressing that far, so my mattress was bare. It wouldn't have mattered anyway, since I was laundering the bed linens.

Anyway, after over an hour of the cleaning process, we were faced with the question of what to do with the now half-soaked mattress (because you have to make a bigger mess to clean up a smaller one), and where to sleep. Knowing that this wouldn't just be a one-night thing since the crazy mattress was now soaked all the way through and would take forever to dry, I wasn't willing to let the couch be the solution. So, we drug the futon mattress out of the guest room into our bedroom and put it on top of the box springs and strategically stood the pee pee mattress up in the guest room where a fan could blow directly on it. The futon is only a full size, and our bed is a queen. So none of our linens fit (the futon's linens were next in line to be washed), the bed is half the height it used to be, and a foot narrower. Oh, and the hauling of the mattresses had to be done quietly because they were drug in and out of the bedroom that is right next to Chickster's, who had since gone to bed.

So now we are sleeping on a short, narrow, much-less-comfortable-than-our-real-bed-bed. It's not too bad, but I will be glad to get my bed back after the cleaning process is finished. We've still got a couple of steps to go, according to the websites. And I'll probably forever be biased against the pee pee spot and try to make sure it always faces down. I seriously thought about just going out and buying a new mattress, but thought that might be a bit extreme. Maybe with Christmas coming up, I should just ask Santa for one.

And how do I know it was Argus that peed on the bed? Well, he's the only dog I have that can create that sort of pee pee pattern. And his own guilt gave him away. He spent the rest of the evening skulking around, knowing that one more toenail out of line and he might lose his life. After I lost the initial urge to wring his neck, I was seriously close to re-homing him or at the very least banishing him to the backyard. And if I find one more spot of dog pee pee in my house, it still might happen. There's only so much pee a person can take.

Oh, and by the way, while the dogs were outside today Argus gleefully rolled himself in something ultra stinky. So he came inside with brown spots all over him, reeking to high heaven. He would go and ruin a good bath he just got at the kennel less than a week ago. Now I get to not only finish cleaning up his pee on my bed, I have to go bathe him and clean off whatever this nasty stuff is so I can stand to be in the same room with him.

Just to reiterate - I love my dogs, but cleaning up their pee in places it shouldn't be is not on the list of things I need or want to spend my time doing. Next time it happens (and I'm not stupid enough to think that it won't), you might be reading about how Argus found himself a new family.