Is My Cute Button Broken?

Why would anyone want a puppy? It makes absolutely no sense to me. Oh yes - sign me up for an uncontrollable ball of energy who's going to poop and pee everywhere, who you'll have to send hours training and who's going to disrupt your schedule. Why? Because it's cute? Here the thing though...

puppies = so not cute

I look at puppies and I see a nightmare. A vision that has proven true beyond a shadow of a doubt with Ned. I never wanted a puppy, I don't like puppies, and trying to raise Ned is one of the hardest things I've ever done. Not hard in the "building the pyramids" sense, hard in the emotional sense. My great failing is that I get frustrated so easily. Maybe that's why I have an in-born internal mechanism for not thinking puppies are cute; somewhere inside of me it just knew that I couldn't handle it. I feel like Jekyll and Hyde, I understand that he's a puppy and the house is already covered in urine markings from the other poorly behaved dogs so I shouldn't expect him to be good at being house broken, but it's just so frustrating. I've been working so hard for so many weeks now, and I obviously Ned gets the basic gist of it - he's especially good at holding it over night, and always is a superstar about waiting until we get outside to eliminate - but what I don't get is the times where I'll take him out, ask him to pee, show him the pee mat, wait, and when I'm finally convinced that he really doesn't have to pee , take him inside where he then pees on the floor. I've known so many dog owners in my life that love to wax on and on about how smart dogs are... um... really? It drives me nuts - if the dogs can hear a paper being rustled in the kitchen and come running because "noises in kitchen = possibility of food" why can they get it straight that "peeing outside = happy owner, peeing inside = enraged crazy owner." I read and read and re-read all the damn websites on how to train your puppy. I've done it over and over and over... crate, outside, pee, reward, crate, outside, pee, reward... but it seems like the second I give Ned any sort of trust, he turns right around and makes me regret it. This is not a healthy situation for me to be in. I can only hope that one day I'll realize how much this made me grow and helped me to learn about blah blah blah.

For the record...

Rats = extremely cute
Possums = cute
Bats = cute

Yes, there seems to be something wrong with my cute button. And I like it that way.