My old dog learned a new trick.

Marty, who cannot hear too well anymore and cannot see too well anymore, took to pee pads like a pigeon to a statue.

Because of a heart condition, my little guy takes diuretics and must go outside often. Sometimes, despite our best intentions, he didn't make it out the door. He didn't even make it across the living room floor.

He was clearly embarrassed, I rushed to clean, and he felt even worse. So he started sneaking behind a chair or nosing open a closet door to hide the pool of evidence.

The day I discovered he'd been to my spare-clothes closet several times, I was in tears. For him, for me, for our future.

My neighborhood grocery store had a possible solution: You can call them pee pads, floor diapers, pee wee pads or whatever you like, but those sheets of absorbent stuff backed with diaper material are the best things ever for an aging dog.

You spread it out on the floor. If there is an accident, you just pick it up by the corners and deposit it in a trash can. You tell him he's a good boy and he chooses the pad the next time he's overcome by the urge.

I always take him outside after he's used the pad, in part to make sure the ol' guy is running on empty and in part to reinforce that going outside is the goal.