Pets & Poop

Pets. We grew up with pets ... dogs specifically. Abbie was the memorable dog from my childhood. We hunted with her, but I don't recall playing much with her. She slept in the same spot, which my mom liked because then the hair was all in one place to vacuum. My bad memory of Abbie was when she was old. She climbed up the doggie stairs to go through her doggie window to get outside ... but she fell off. She was spasm-ing on the garage floor when I got there. We didn't know if she was in pain, dying, or both. It was horrible. I remember my dad cried when we put her to sleep.

Fast forward ... there was a whirlwind of dogs after that. Sandie, Wendy, a few others with names ending with ee or ie or y ... but they wouldn't do. Rhea didn't pan out either, which is fine with me since her named rhymed with diahrrea. {Insert your own pun here, as I chose to ignore the pan, bed pan, diahrrea connection}. (Sorry for the second parentheses in a row, but this is no joke. My wife Lauren just said, and I quote ... "When you're sliding into first, and you feel something burst ... diahrrea uh uh, diahrrea uh uh.") Finally my parents settled on Peaches, who was a great dog in everyone's eyes except Jason's. I still think Peaches went to sleep too early.

I had Rock for awhile, a boxer that I really liked. Harrison was allergic to him though, and I was at work all day while Rock was bored at home. So he found a better home, and that has been my only adult experience with my own dog. Granted, I am an uncle to Yuma, in that funny sort of way whereby I invite her over even though it's understood that she will defecate or pee in my yard. The pee kills the grass, and Noah seems to step in the poop before we can pick it up. But Uncle Paul must not mind or else he would quit. I think it's seeing how excited Yuma gets when she knows I am in my work clothes, and she wants to run across the street. I have a hard time saying no.



Lauren and I have agreed on multiple occasions that a dog is not in our plans. Who would feed it? Clean up after it? Watch it when we travel? Pay for it? Not to mention the shedding, as guests can be allergic to dogs ... on and on and on. Her parents gave us a stuffed dog, Goldie, because they knew that we don't want a real dog. Goldie now sits by a window, partially as a joke/fake guard dog and partially because we have no real room for him elsewhere. However, there are emotional moments when Lauren almost caves, and recently we had one of those close calls. The neighbors were giving away free puppies.



Watch out men, you must stay strong in these moments of life. It's a 15 year commitment. In this case, some stray dog birthed some puppies in their garage ... yes, that's a BIG RED FLAG you just saw waving past you! Maybe half lab. I was a rock though, a pillar of strength and courage, unfazed by the moment. I even had the presence of mind to run a calculation on how many thousands of dollars it would cost us over 10-15 years if we took this "free" puppy. She ultimately realized that the emotions weren't a good enough reason to keep the dog. Afterward, she mentioned that the dog would have been sleeping with us in our bed! Men, do you see how crucial this is to hold your ground?!?! My bed needs to be clean, and dogs don't wipe their rears!



My main concern about having dogs is definitely the poop. Excrement is unclean. I think it's one of God's ways of reminding us how primitive and disgusting we can be. Have you ever felt prideful while sitting on the pot? I didn't think so. It's not a pomp and circumstance moment. Now I know that occasionally some of us guys have had moments of joy at the size or shape of our dung, but it's a vulnerable moment while you are sitting there. You can't really defend yourself if attacked while going ... girls don't like it ... the room stinks. And why do you start to sweat sometimes? That's a mystery to me. And even if you sneak in a game of hand-held Yahtzee or Poker, you have to make sure to not contaminate the hand-held game. An occasional redeeming factor is the alone time on a busy day, but overall it's a below average experience.



And no, I won't blog about my poop sample story.



With that said, I was talking with Tom recently about the poop in the yard from not one but two dogs at his house. That's a lot of crap. Whether it's fresh in the yard, fossilized over time in the grass, or stuck on your shoe ... ultimately the poop will hit the fan when somebody realizes that all this stuff has to be cleaned up.



I draw near to my conclusion with this very loosely paraphrased anecdote from Jerry Seinfeld (insert his voice inflection at your discretion). If aliens were to visit our planet, they would think the dogs are in charge. Why? We walk around behind our dogs, following them wherever they pull us. And wandering around aimlessly while staring at an animal's butt is not for kings. Then said dog drops a biscuit. I'm hear to tell you, whoever cleans up crap is not in charge of a planet. Not only that, but continuing to carry this biscuit in your hand is horrific - especially in those cheap, filled with holes, plastic hand-bags from Wal*Mart whereby you can still feel how gooey it is. {Side note that is definitely not from Jerry, although he is Jewish, as are tons of the comedians - I read that from a Jewish perspective there were certain occupations that were so bad that a wife could divorce her husband if he took it. Working with dung was one of them. Not sure if this was in ancient or modern times. Now continuing in Jerry's voice} ... The aliens would look at this scene, instantly recognize that the dog was the leader of our planet, and say, "Oh yeah, we need to talk to him."



So to close my thoughts on pets and poop, here is a picture of a recent toad found in our front yard. Noah likes bugs also, and we conveniently allow them all to live, pee, and take dumps ... outside ... in order to not disrupt the food chain.