Is It Bad?

Is it bad when you realize your dog has peed on the clothes you're wearing?

Daniel took me out to dinner last night so I put on my little tuxedo jacket. On my way to meet him I thought I smelled something fishy in the car. I guess fishy isn't the right word, more urine-y. Toby has a terrible habit of peeing on anything we leave on the floor, frequently dirty laundry. Apparently this is his attempt at training us to pick up after ourselves. He has trained us well in picking up clutter. We are very tidy when it comes to most rooms of the house except for our bedroom. I think he wants us to do better about keeping up with the dirty laundry and punishes us when it overflows beyond the confines of the laundry basket. (This theory has been debunked however seeing as how he will also pee on a basket full of folded clean clothes if the basket is left on the floor. The truth is he just likes to mark anything and everything within the reach of his urine stream.)

So back to my story. While driving I carefully smelled the various articles of clothing I was wearing. Let me emphasize cautiously. I have crafted my technique after many times of shoving the arm pits of tee shirts to my nose to see if Daniel had worn them yet only to find that yes, yes indeed said shirt had made a visit to the gym. And there have been many occasions when pulling an article of clothing from the floor and smelling it to make sure it had not received the "Toby Touch" that I have been overzealous in my sniffing. Back to the story (again)...I reached for my coat on the seat: clean. Tank top: clean. Can't reach my jeans to smell up close which probably means they're clean as well. I don't smell anything on my jacket at first and so I wonder if he has "made his mark" somewhere inside of the car. And then reaching for the mirror to check my lip gloss it hits me, BAM urine! I'd been hit! My sleeve had been Toby-fied so I discarded my jacket and banished it to the backseat for the remainder of my drive. I had to put it back on when entering the restaurant because I was only wearing a tank underneath and the weather is still in the low 50's. Luckily the restaurant was warm enough to go sleeveless during the meal, but still you feel my pain right?

This is not the first time I have left the house before realizing my shirt had been peed on. Last summer before meeting our friends Brad and Sam, I met Daniel at Standard. After becoming aware of my problem I was able to score a shirt from Daniel's store as a replacement for our night out. Apparently getting peed on can have its perks.

I like to think that maybe Toby recognizes my clothing as a way to mark me as his territory without peeing on my actual person. Maybe he just wants the world to know that "I am his and he is mine". It's sweet really. I remember my old boss showing up to work one day not realizing he was sporting a spit-up stain on his shoulder. He had left the house not even noticing where his son had "marked" him that very morning. Maybe this is all just preparation for parenthood down the road. Toby is so thoughtful.