A watchdog monitoring system having a watchdog integrated circuit and a microcontroller is provided. The microcontroller has a microprocessor, and a digital input/output device with an enable pin and a disable pin. A disable application in the microcontroller monitors the enable pin of the digital input-output device, and if the enable pin does not have a high logic state within a predetermined amount of time after a first time indicating that the microcontroller is malfunctioning, then the disable application generates a control message.