judge city

The Internet is mostly a garbage place filled with sewer people. Featuring the worst kind of sewer people. Smug, know-it-all sewer people.

Ask it a question and its minions spew out a garbled mess of advice and opinions. Think you have a cold, want to check your symptoms online? You have herpes. Wonder whether you should eat at this cute restaurant? One person gave it  five stars and another says he would rather ‘watch his beloved grandma slowly die’ then eat there again. Think you might be pregnant? You probably are since this woman on The Bump community thread states that she had all negative pregnancy tests throughout her pregnancy and is now so happy with her little Brayden. Sidenote: Why is everyone’s baby on pregnancy chat threads named Brayden?

I always figured my OCD was to blame for my buying into all of the vast, incendiary, differing of opinions that fueled the fires of my fears as I ventured deeper into the k-hole of rare diseases I thought I might have. The restaurants I should or shouldn’t go to. The babies I thought I was carrying.

But, no.

No. I blame the Internet and it’s ability to ‘bring people together’ to ‘help each other’ ‘solve’ problems. Diagnose. Educate. Why? Because most people should never, ever, ever give advice or help others. And most people shouldn’t be given a virtual stage in which to humblebrag their experiences to others under the guise of ‘advice.’

And I learned this as I went deep into the far reaches of the Internet to figure out how to housebreak a puppy. Yes, Internet and it’s prolific chat threads, you have finally broken me.

This is my puppy Lila:

She is super cute.  I love her. But, I wanted her to pee and poop outside.

So after a few accidents, I did what most people do and Google-searched the problem. A few nice articles here and there from ASPCA and American Kennel. And then I did what some people with OCD like I have do. I relentlessly scoured the Internet to see if my specific breed of puppy is even able to be house-trained and if I am to blame for her eventual need to wear doggie diapers all the time and was there something wrong with her bowels and is there something wrong with me?

And my specific search, “how to housebreak a Shiba Inu puppy” yielded the Internet’s usual deluge of completely polar opposite opinions. One site said they are extremely easy to train dogs. Another said Shibas are extremely difficult. And you know what was cute? The entire Reddit thread dedicated to how much Shibas don’t like to pee and poop outside. Fantastic! But even that thread wasn’t so bad, for, at least the thread had that special brand of nerdy sarcasm I don’t totally detest.

The worst came from Shiba owners who thought they did SUCH a good job that they decided to create sites that promote their own skills as trainers. Yet, these Shiba Whisperers’ advice was merely one giant bragging session about themselves and their Mensa-level dogs.

My Snickers is SO friendly and SO amazing I was able to house train her an hour after she was born!

My little guy Sake is so good I hardly had to do anything but point to the door and he’d open it himself, poop, and vacuum it up. Then I gave him a treat and he does that all the time now.

God help the poor, frenzied souls who dared asked further questions in the comments sections of such websites. All they got was akin to:

-“Did you try being a better human being? Maybe one who doesn’t cuts corners?”

-“My Shiba pooped in the house. And then all of a sudden she stopped! Now she never makes in the house. It was so funny, she’s the best! Hope this helps :)”

-“What about buying a different Shiba? Like Snickers!”

In the pre-Internet days would people who thought they were so helpful have to wait for a publisher to publish their terrible advice?  Is that worse? Paying for bad advice vs. having access to a ton of terrible, okay, confusing advice for free?

Or am I the one to blame for not using the Internet correctly? For playing fetch with my anxiety and letting the dumbasses of the Internet win?

Just when I was ready to break down, something amazing happened. In my frazzled state, all of the unhelpful and semi-helpful opinions of the Internet ‘experts’ formed a rat king situation of advice in my brain, fusing all the terrible tips with the golden nuggets of good advice that I gleaned.

And…it worked. Lila is pretty much housebroken.

Ugh, Internet trash disposal dog trainers…I guess you sort-of win this time. But, I still stand by the fact that every other pieces of advice/review/how-to on the Internet is pretty much terrible.

Now onto teething….