Just a little warning, if you have a weak stomach in relation to animal feces, don't bother reading this somewhat true accounting of my life with my dog. If you don't have weak stomach to above mentioned situation, feel free to enjoy.
When I got up this morning, I woke to my dog, Baby Girl, needing an immediate bio-break. So I dressed in sweatpants and a white t-shirt, put my shoes on and leashed up the little angel with horns. I walk down the stairs, almost losing my footing twice to her urgent yanking at the leash. I can tell by the yanking at the leash that Baby hadn't been out in a while. We clear the stairs and we round the back side of my apartment building to the official dog "walking area".
It is a blustery morning. A cold wind is blowing hard from an arctic front moving in. I can tell it is an arctic front because the pair of built in, God-given temperature gauges or as the rest of the world refers to them as nipples, scream a "hello" loud and clear to the world through the white tee I am wearing. Let me put it to you this way, it is cold enough that I can hang a rain coat off these suckers right now, well the left one at least. The right one is still a little shy.
After an instant squat and river of urine pooling up under the grass, Baby girl starts roaming the grassy area sniffing like she is part hound, which she is not. My built-in temperature gauges are now indicating it is time to go back in. I call Baby and we walk back around the building and back up the stairs. I notice, as I always do, how quickly the 35-year-old Baby (her doggy-years age of 35 divided by 7 equals her actual age of 5) sprints up the stairs compared to me, being only five years older, hobbling up the stairs one step at a time and not anywhere near a sprinters pace.
I get back inside; throw on a sweatshirt and a hoody zipped all the way to the neck. I then proceed to give myself a bio-break. I eat a little breakfast; eggs, bacon, medication and orange juice, in case you were wondering. I sit down to start doing some reading as I finish my Orange Juice and I see Baby Girl peering around the chair, which is an indicator of only one thing: She wasn't done.
I get back up and walk to the door. I put my shoes back on. I grab Baby's leash and she is jumping up and down with excitement like I didn't just take her out fifteen minutes ago. She stops jumping just long enough to get her leash on her and then she squeezes in two more leaps of joy, or maybe they are leaps of impatience, before I get the door open. I open the door and we repeat the awkward trip down the stairs.
It isn't as cold this trip, sweatshirt and hoody get all the credit for that, but now it is raining lightly. Whether you want it to or not, just wait fifteen minutes and the weather in Oregon is bound to change. We round the apartment building to the walking area and Baby does that little awkward squat that all dogs do when they are about to dump a Titanic equivalent load on the ground. And what a healthy load it is. As she is excavating her bowels of the last ten days worth of meals, I swear that she is the only dog in the world that can actually poop out more than she eats; I prepare the little pink plastic bag for pick up duty. That's right; I am a responsible dog owner. My wife is as well.
My dog is one of those that can't stand in one spot to do her business. She has to walk around between each turd, which only exacerbates the grossness of cleaning up after her. I told you I was a responsible dog owner, but that doesn't make the job any less disgusting. See when you have to walk several paces to pick the next turd, you are left with a handful of poo in your hands that is either ready to fall out on the ground, which means you have to bend over to pick it up again, or it is getting squished in your hands releasing all of the power of the stench of dog poo, which I might add is 100000000000000000000000 times more potent than any cat can muster on it's worse day. It is safe to say that my dog's poo could jump start a vomit in the most seasoned of veterinarians. I am just glad I ate before this trip down, because if I had been hungry before, I am not hungry now.
She spends five minutes hunched over with nothing coming out. She is just walking around looking like the hunchback of Notre Dame and I am standing there watching her with a fistful of poo, and only this little, ultra-thin plastic bag standing between my hand and her poo. But that little pink bag doesn't protect me from the stink of the situation.
Sorry, I got sidetracked from the purpose of this story, straying into the realm of poo. It happens when you have the world's most efficient poop factory living in your house. Around the apartment we go, over to the dumpster to dispose of Baby's little gift to the world. I always joke, with myself at least, that every time Baby Girl poops, she is making a deposit into my 401k? If you have seen my 401k you would know that I wasn't really making a joke there.
We head back over to the apartment, up the stairs; she is just as quick this time as she was twenty-five minutes ago and I am all that much slower. I open the door and unleash her. My shoes come off and finally, I can sit down and actually wake up. She won't have to go out again until about 5:00 PM and it is now 10:30 AM.
I am wrong.
I am sitting in my chair, relaxing with no television, radio, computer or other electronic distractions, reading my book. From the corner of my eye I see Baby peering at me from around the chair. I put my book down; closing it and losing my place damn it. I look at her and say, "Really?" She responded in kind with a pathetic little whine. "You have got be kidding me!" I was a little more than frustrated at this point.
Down the stairs, around the building, hunkering over and the juiciest, nastiest sounding diarrhea I have ever heard, and I suffer from IBS, comes shooting out of her. Now the first thing that comes to my mind isn't "Oh, no... Baby Girl is sick." No I am not that responsible of a dog owner. Instead I am trying to figure out how the hell I am supposed to clean up liquid poo with a plastic bag and my hand. It didn't take long before I decided that it just wasn't going to happen.
I ended up making eight trips down and back up the stairs before noon. Baby Girl needed two baths because she got splattered by her owner version of Niagara Falls on two different trips. The by the time morning ended I felt like I had just finished a marathon. Not one of those people who finish a marathon with both hands thrust in the air because they finished in the top 100. No I am the guy who finishes dead last and collapses from exhaustion just as his foot crosses the finish line.
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