What a Basset...

LEO has been acting up again the past couple of days. I think he's getting anxious about the Easter Bunny coming. Since he has phobias about virtually everything, it would only stand to reason that he'd be petrified at the prospect of a giant bunny hopping through our house dropping jelly beans everywhere. Not to mention, he happens to hate jelly beans, which is kinda weird because he loves skittles and licorice. Even though he's doing much better with the St. John's Wort/Melatonin regimen, he still has all kinds of anxieties just at a milder level. His separation anxiety kicked in the other night when we left him alone for a couple of hours. Since he can't tolerate a crate and hates being shut into a specific room, I decided to block him out of the living room where I had just had the carpets cleaned. Whenever he is left home alone, even if one of us is just checking the mail, he will pee. More often than not, it's on a rug because he knows its harder for us to clean. Once in awhile we get lucky and he pees on the tile floor. A little clorox cleanup, a few paper towels, and it's taken care of.  My strategy was simple: I put the kitchen bar stools across the walkway and sealed him out (or so I thought) and we left. Upon return, as soon as we pulled into the driveway I could hear his "distressed" bark.  Yes, as a mother of a new infant can detect and translate what each cry means, I can tell one bark from another. He was stress barking and I knew instantly that he was in trouble. I ran into the house unsure of what precarious situation I would find him in.Only LEO would get himself trapped in the very room that he was supposed to be blocked out of. He had somehow knocked over a barstool (he is afraid of his own shadow and usually won't even go near a cardboard box if it's in his way) but somehow he managed to knock it over and get into the living room. He would not go back through the knocked over barstool, he was just standing on the newly cleaned carpet barking his head off.  When I was in a rush to get to him, I didn't realize that I was walking through a huge puddle of pee on my kitchen floor. Therefore, even though he had thankfully NOT peed on the newly cleaned carpet, I tracked his pee onto the newly cleaned carpet with my shoe! GOTTA LOVE LEO!!!