FANZINE

We brought her home. She pooped in the house. We pointed to the poop and said, “Poop.” We pointed to the window and said, “Outside.” We carried her outside and set her down on the grass. “Poop outside,” we said. She wandered around the grass, but she did not poop.

The following day, Sunday, she pooped in the house, right on the rug. We pointed to the poop and said, “Poop.” We pointed to the window and said, “Outside.” We carried her outside and set her down on the grass. “Poop outside,” we said. She wandered around the grass, but she did not poop. There was no poop left in her, we surmised; all of it was inside, on the rug. We debated and voted on whether or not she should still receive a treat. With 100% of the vote, the yeas took it.

The following day, Monday, she pooped in the house, on the rug again. We pointed to the poop and said, “Poop.” We pointed to the window and said, “Outside.” We carried her outside and set her down on the grass. “Poop outside,” we said. She wandered around the grass, and then she pooped, but we had forgotten to bring the treats outside. By the time we had retrieved one, from inside, she had already finished pooping, and she was already wandering around. We debated and voted on whether or not she should still receive the treat. With 75% of the vote, the yeas took it.

Over the course of the following week, she pooped in the house at least twice per day. Every day, we pointed to the poop and said, “Poop”; we pointed to the window and said, “Outside”; we carried her outside and set her down on the grass; we said, “Poop outside.” Sometimes she pooped on the grass; sometimes she wandered around the grass without pooping; sometimes she peed. We gave her a treat for peeing, but pee was not the problem. Poop was the problem.

On Wednesday evening, we tried to clarify to her the difference between the concepts of inside and outside. We pointed at the rug and said, “Inside,” and then we walked her around the inside of the house, saying, “Inside, inside, inside.” We carried her outside, to the grass, and we said, “Outside.” We walked her around the house’s exterior walls saying, “Outside, outside, outside.” When we stopped speaking, she tilted her head to the side. This tilting of her head to the side was very cute, so we gave her a treat.

The following day, Thursday, she pooped in the house three times. “Poop outside, remember?” we said. We carried her outside and set her down on the grass. “Poop outside,” we said. She did not poop but merely tilted her head to the side. We debated and voted on whether or not to give her a treat for being cute. The vote was a tie, so we gave her half a treat.

On Friday, she pooped in the house three times.

On Saturday, she pooped in the house two times. She pooped on the grass one time.

On Sunday, she pooped in the house either two or three times.

On Monday, she pooped in the house one time. She pooped on the grass two times.

On Tuesday, she pooped in the house three times.

On Wednesday, she pooped in the house two times. She pooped on the grass one time.

On Thursday, she pooped in the house two times. She pooped on the grass one time.

On Friday, she pooped in the house three times. On Friday evening, while she was sleeping, we considered and discussed the possibility that there might be a problem either with our terminology or with our methodology, or perhaps even with both. What seemed to us a clear and simple distinction, the distinction between the concepts of inside and outside, was, for her, more complex, or more nuanced, or even, perhaps, nonexistent. We considered the possibility that the house’s exterior walls, which, from our perspective, obviously delimited outside from inside, did not function in the same way for her. We considered and discussed the fact that she pooped on the rug more than anywhere else. Could it be that the rug, inside, reminded her of the grass, outside? Could it be that the distinction between rug and grass did not depend so heavily, for her, on the grass being situated beyond the house’s exterior walls, and the rug within its interior walls? Perhaps she imagined the rug as an extension of the outside, we considered, a kind of enclave of the outside within the inside, or perhaps she had never made the distinction between the concepts of inside and outside in the first place. When we pointed to the window and said, “Outside,” surely she did not trace with her eyes an invisible dashed line between the tip of our index finger and the window at which that finger was pointing. Could it be that whenever she felt the need to poop, she was thinking not of pooping outside, but, rather, of pooping on our index finger? And since we had used the same finger to point to the rug when attempting to clarify the distinction between outside and inside, two Wednesdays earlier, might she now be associating our finger not only with the concept of outside, but also with the concept of inside, not to mention the concept of poop, as we had used the same finger to point to the poop when saying, “Poop,” such that when we later said, “Poop outside,” might she have translated our command as, “Poop on poop”? Moreover, how could we be certain that her mind was even in possession of the concept of poop, not to mention the concepts of inside and outside? How could we be certain that she possessed a recognition of the sound of the words referring to the thing poop, to the thing inside and to the thing outside, first, the capacity for determining a clear association between these sounds and the things to which they referred, second, and the ability to organize the sounds and conceptual references syntactically, third, including a recognition of both the sound and the meaning of the verb to go, which we had omitted from our command, “Poop outside”? We didn’t say, “Go poop outside,” but instead we said, “Poop outside,” which we knew could be interpreted to mean, “There is poop outside,” that is, “There exists poop outside,” although such a construction would include an additional omission, we knew, the concept of there-being, the concept of there-existing. It seemed to us rather unlikely, however, that she, still just a puppy, possessed the capacity to bring to bear these concepts on her interpretation of our command, “Poop outside.”

We debated and voted on whether or not to get rid of the rug. With 100% of the vote, the yeas took it. Even if the elimination of the rug amounted to nothing with respect to clarifying the inside–outside distinction in her mind, we welcomed the rug’s removal from the house, as it had come to smell permanently like poop.

That same evening we resolved to become more disciplined about our doling out of treats. For how could we expect her to be disciplined about pooping outside if we ourselves could not be disciplined about giving her treats? We decided that, henceforth, she would receive a treat only immediately after she pooped outside. Never again would she receive a treat simply for tilting her head to the side; never again would she receive half a treat or three-quarters of a treat in relation to the percentage breakdown of a family vote. Henceforth, she would receive either a full treat or no treat at all, a decision that would be wholly dependent on whether or not she pooped outside.

The morning of the following day, Saturday, she pooped in the house, right where the rug used to be. We pointed to the poop and said, “Poop.” We walked to the window. We tapped on the window with our index finger. We said, “Outside.” We carried her outside and set her down on the grass. “Poop outside,” we said. She tilted her head to the side. We found the tilting of her head to the side to be extremely cute, but we did not give her a treat.

On Sunday, she pooped in the house twice, both times right where the rug used to be. We knelt beside the poop and pointed at it, attempting to minimize the distance between her poop and our finger. “Poop,” we said. We walked to the window and tapped on it. “Outside,” we said. She tilted her head to the side. We carried her outside and set her down on the grass. “Poop outside,” we said. She wandered around the grass, and then she pooped, but only a little. We gave her a treat in accordance with our resolution of the previous Friday.

On Monday, she did not poop in the house. She pooped on the grass two times. We gave her a treat both times. “What a good girl for pooping outside,” we said. It was the first day since we had brought her home that she had not pooped in the house. The vote was unanimous. We threw her a party.

On Tuesday, she did not poop at all, as far as we could tell. The vote was a tie. We threw her a party, but we allowed her only half a slice of cake this time.

The following day, a Wednesday that none of us will ever forget, she pooped in the house at least 27 times. It was because of the cake she had eaten on Monday and Tuesday nights, we surmised, at her parties. Without any vote or debate, we resolved to never again serve her a slice of cake.

On Thursday, she pooped in the house four times. Each time we knelt, minimizing the distance between poop and finger. We said, “Poop”; we tapped on the window; we said, “Outside.” We carried her to the grass. “Poop outside,” we said. But she did not wander around the grass, and she did not tilt her head to the side. She merely stood on her legs, staring into space.

On Friday, she pooped in the house three times. Each time, we knelt by the poop and pointed. Once, we did more than point; we actually touched the poop with our finger. “Poop,” we said, touching it. We tapped on the window with the same finger, leaving a small brown smudge on the glass. “Outside,” we said.

On Saturday, she pooped in the house no fewer than four times.

That evening, while she was sleeping, we convened an emergency meeting to debate and vote on the matter of whether we should return her to the dog breeder and attempt to exchange her for a different puppy, one who, ideally, possessed a greater capacity for language acquisition. With 100% of the vote, the nays took it.

On Sunday, she pooped in the house three times. Each time we knelt, minimizing the distance between poop and finger. We said, “Poop.” We tapped on the window. We said, “Outside.” We carried her to the grass. “Poop outside,” we said. She tilted her head once. She stood on her legs, staring into space, two times.

On Monday, she pooped in the house two times. She pooped on the grass one time.

On Tuesday, she pooped in the house twice, on the grass once.

Wednesday—house three times.

Thursday—house once, grass twice.

Friday—house three times.

Saturday—house three times.

Sunday—house twice, grass once.

Monday—house once, grass twice.

Tuesday—house three times.

On Tuesday evening, we convened another emergency meeting to debate and vote on the matter of whether we should attempt to return her and get a refund, which money we would use to help defray the cost of a much-needed family vacation. To our surprise, the nays took it with a full 100% of the vote.

That same evening, while she was sleeping, we returned to a consideration of our recent attempts at decreasing the frequency with which she pooped inside, again focusing on our terms and methods. First, we considered and discussed the possibility that we may have been focusing overmuch on what we perceived to be the poop problem’s terminological component. Poop, inside, outside—these words, specifically, these words’ sounds, were, we knew, arbitrary in relation to the concepts or objects, the things, they described—poop, inside, outside. As there existed no natural or inherent relationship between words and things, we considered the fact that we may just as well have been referring to her poop as laundry. We considered that all this time we may have been just as well off speaking the word love instead of the word inside, or the word time instead of the word outside. While walking her around the inside of the house, for instance, four Wednesdays earlier, we could have been saying, “Love, love, love, love.” And as we walked her around the house’s exterior walls, we could have been saying, “Time, time, time, time.” In lieu of saying, “Poop outside,” we could have been saying, “Laundry time.” We knew that the particular words we used did not matter; what mattered, we knew, was that once the use of a word became conventional in its reference to a thing—in the case of the word poop, for example, its reference to the thing poop—it became very difficult to alter this relationship. If one desired to be understood in the world, one had to resort to employing long-established word–thing conventions. Poop, in our world, meant poop, just as outside meant outside, word meant word and thing meant thing. It would be a daunting task for us to say the word time and mean outside, or to say the word laundry and mean poop, or to say the word love and mean inside.

With these hard, seemingly unassailable linguistic facts in mind, we returned to a reconsideration of the poop problem’s methodological component. When considering the meaning of words—poop, outside—as isolated from their context—for example, “Please go poop outside”—one may easily become confused, it seemed to us, just as she had become confused, by words that had left their natural home, by words that had left their rightful place for some foreign place, by words, it seemed to us, that had gone on vacation. The crux of the poop problem, as we came to understand it on Tuesday evening, was that we were attempting to force words such as poop, inside and outside away from their proper home and into a foreign environment, into a kind of fantasy land in which the conditions for the modification of her poop routine seemed to us very clear, very simple and smooth in their logical arrangement, and yet all the while they had, in fact, remained quite distant from that muddier, rougher and more complex arrangement associated with their real-world context, our home. Perhaps, we considered, our words, from this perspective, were doing no real work at all. We had to get rougher and dirtier, we decided, even dirtier than we had been getting, perhaps even dirtier than we had gotten three Wednesdays earlier when she had pooped in the house at least 27 times. And, crucially, it was time, we resolved, for her to get dirty.

We took a vote on whether or not, come the following day, Wednesday, that whenever we spoke the word poop, we would hold her by the scruff of her neck and lower her head toward the ground until such time as the tip of her nose actually met with the thing poop, and that we would hold her nose to the thing poop for approximately five seconds’ time, thus adding a dirtier and rougher context to the poop problem and eliminating the possibility of any further confusion, thereby returning language from its fantasy-land vacation and relocating it in its proper, dirty, real-world home, our home. With 100% of the vote, the yeas took it.

The next morning, Wednesday, she pooped in the house. We grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and lowered her head until her nose touched the thing poop. We made the sound of the word poop and we held her in that position for no fewer than five seconds before releasing her nose from the thing poop. We carried her outside and set her down on the grass. “Outside,” we said. She stood on her legs, staring into space.

On Wednesday evening, she pooped in the house. We grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and lowered her head until her nose touched the thing poop. We made the sound of the word poop and held her there. We carried her outside and set her down. “Outside,” we said. She stood on legs, staring into space.

On Thursday morning, she pooped in the house. We lowered her head to the thing poop, made the sound of the word poop, held her down. We carried her outside. “Outside,” we said. She stood on her legs, staring into space.

On Thursday afternoon, she pooped in the house. We lowered her head, said the word poop, held her nose to the thing poop, carried her outside. “Outside,” we said. She stood on her legs, staring into space. And then she wandered around.

On Friday morning, she pooped in the house. Word poop, thing poop, outside. She wandered around. She pooped a little. “What a good girl for pooping outside,” we said. We gave her a treat.

On Friday evening, she acted like she was going to poop in the house, but then she wandered around. She stood on her legs, staring into space. We carried her outside. She wandered around, and then she pooped. We gave her a treat.

On Saturday morning, she pooped in the house, but in a new spot, right by the patio door. We said, “Poop.” We held her down. We carried her outside. “Outside,” we said. She wandered around. “Poop outside,” we said. She stood on her legs, staring ahead.

On Saturday afternoon, she acted like she was going to poop in the house, but then she raced to the patio door. “Poop outside!” we exclaimed. “Poop outside!” We let her outside, and then she pooped. “What a good girl for pooping outside!” we exclaimed. We gave her a treat.

On Sunday morning, she scratched at the patio door. We opened the door. “Poop outside?” we asked. She tilted her head to the side, and then she ran outside. She wandered around the grass, and then she pooped. “What a good girl for pooping outside,” we said. Again, she tilted her head to the side. We gave her two treats, one for being cute and one for pooping outside.

On Monday morning, we took a vote. The decision was unanimous. We drove to the kennel and boarded her, and then we drove to the airport and boarded an airplane, commencing a much-needed family vacation.