Life's little surprises

Wise man hide leaf in tree - ancient Chinese proverb


See this rug?
We have one just like it in our dining room and a similar, darker version in the living room. They fit nicely in our century-old Queen Anne Victorian house.
But they have an unexpected down-side, especially the one in the living room.
They are a near-perfect camouflage background for dogshit.
We don't use the living room much, so Ruthie's rather rare indiscretions sometimes went a week or more before they were discovered - long enough to dry and nearly petrify.
Now that we have Pete the Pup, this is especially troubling because Pete hasn't quite gotten the idea that his bathroom facilities are outdoors.
Even with daylight streaming in through the windows or with all of the lamps blazing, Pete poop is fiendishly hard to see. Maria made that discovery last night with her sock feet. We did a careful survey and got all of it, but just to be sure I swept the area with my laser pointer at a height of about a half-inch and found nothing more.
Pete gets regular visits to the back yard but he seems to think it's because we want him to chase Ruthie around, gnaw on a stick or poke his nose into interesting places under the deck.
Pete has no idea how lucky he is that I am completely captivated by his cuteness and that he has caught me at a point in my life when I had the patience to deal with his chaos.