Now that I have a dog I will only talk about poop.
For Christmas this year, I told Dan we could get a dog. It was a better present than that - I paid the pet deposit, bought some food, got a crate from my mom's house and set up our own house to be the super happy home of some lucky canine. We went to Town Lake Animal Center several times and after each visit I had to go home and take a two hour nap. TLAC is traumatic for high strung, sensitive ear and nosed people like me. Plus all the dogs are so excited to get out of their cells that there is no way to tell if they're normal dogs trapped in a shelter or psychotic dogs waiting to eat your throat when you fall asleep. The one dog we both really liked was really liked by everyone else and we were too late to even put our names on the list to get him.
We resorted to Craigslist, with all its drama (who knew there would be such extensive quarreling in the pets section?) and eventually found a Siberian Husky who needed to be rehomed. I have a good friend whose sister owns a Husky and her dog attacks small dogs, eats raw meat, jumps on my friend's chest while she's sleeping to growl in her face and does other sundry, horrible, cranky dog type things. Needless to say, I was wary of huskies but Dan became convinced that the Craigslist dog was the dog for us (before even meeting him, I might add) and I don't know if you've ever tried to argue with Dan when he has his heart set on something; for those of you haven't, I'll spare you the suspense: you can't.
We went to see said Husky who, conviently for Dan, was already named Dio. I don't know if you are familiar with Dio (I wasn't), but he was in Black Sabbath at some point and sang some song called Holy Diver and he's super cool if you're a dude who's into metal. Not being a dude who's into metal, I am only somewhat aware of the colossal awesomeness that is Ronnie James Dio (the human, not the dog). But this is the boring part of the story, the part where we go meet him and he's cute and wiggly and snuggly and we load him up into the car and go home.
This is where the poop comes in.
Dio's previous owners lived somewhat out in the boonies and felt safe letting him run around without a leash. That's fine, but we do not live out in the boonies and there's a bus stop in our front yard and we don't even have a bleeding fence around the yard, so Dio only goes outdoors with his leash on, for now. Dio is a bit resistant to this idea, although he's gotten much better about it. He likes walking on the leash now, he likes running on the leash, he likes all sorts of things on the leash. Except pooping. Pooping on the leash is not for our dog, our dog would rather wait until we are alseep or have left the house for thirty minutes so he can deposit a steaming pile of shit on our floor, preferably on the rug. Well, the rug's ruined now and no longer in the house so the floor will do. If we shut him up in the kitchen, he shits in the kitchen. If we let him loose, he shits in the hallway. I have cleaned up SO MUCH POOP in the last week.
Dan and I now discuss dog poop like it's an interesting subject. "Has Dio pooped today? Did he poop on your walk? Did he poop while we slept? You have to praise him if he poops outside. Let's read more on the internet about how to get dogs to poop outside!" Poop poop poop poop poop! "The bad news is that he pooped inside. The good news is that it's not runny anymore." POOP!!!!!! "Dio, do you need to poop! Poop, Dio, poop!"
If I see you in the next couple of weeks, be assured that I will bring up dog poop at some point; this is so interesting to me, it must be to everyone else, right? If you are an especially good friend, you might ask about poop first - this will give us something to discuss and make me feel that my life still has some value to others. I'm assuming that this problem will eventually go away, with enough outside-poop-praise and consistent walks but for now, it occupies about half of my brain at any given time. I imagine this must be what it's like to have children, if you multiplied it by ten thousand billion. This is good to consider, as doing so calms my raging baby lust. My uterus has shut up for the moment as my brain overloads it with the stress of caring for another creature.
All of that aside, we have a wonderful, sweet, beautiful dog who I adore. Huskies are very smart and ours likes to test us from time to time, but as long as we remind ourselves that we are the humans and he is the dog, we do fine. I just hope he doesn't grow thumbs.
We resorted to Craigslist, with all its drama (who knew there would be such extensive quarreling in the pets section?) and eventually found a Siberian Husky who needed to be rehomed. I have a good friend whose sister owns a Husky and her dog attacks small dogs, eats raw meat, jumps on my friend's chest while she's sleeping to growl in her face and does other sundry, horrible, cranky dog type things. Needless to say, I was wary of huskies but Dan became convinced that the Craigslist dog was the dog for us (before even meeting him, I might add) and I don't know if you've ever tried to argue with Dan when he has his heart set on something; for those of you haven't, I'll spare you the suspense: you can't.
We went to see said Husky who, conviently for Dan, was already named Dio. I don't know if you are familiar with Dio (I wasn't), but he was in Black Sabbath at some point and sang some song called Holy Diver and he's super cool if you're a dude who's into metal. Not being a dude who's into metal, I am only somewhat aware of the colossal awesomeness that is Ronnie James Dio (the human, not the dog). But this is the boring part of the story, the part where we go meet him and he's cute and wiggly and snuggly and we load him up into the car and go home.
This is where the poop comes in.
Dio's previous owners lived somewhat out in the boonies and felt safe letting him run around without a leash. That's fine, but we do not live out in the boonies and there's a bus stop in our front yard and we don't even have a bleeding fence around the yard, so Dio only goes outdoors with his leash on, for now. Dio is a bit resistant to this idea, although he's gotten much better about it. He likes walking on the leash now, he likes running on the leash, he likes all sorts of things on the leash. Except pooping. Pooping on the leash is not for our dog, our dog would rather wait until we are alseep or have left the house for thirty minutes so he can deposit a steaming pile of shit on our floor, preferably on the rug. Well, the rug's ruined now and no longer in the house so the floor will do. If we shut him up in the kitchen, he shits in the kitchen. If we let him loose, he shits in the hallway. I have cleaned up SO MUCH POOP in the last week.
Dan and I now discuss dog poop like it's an interesting subject. "Has Dio pooped today? Did he poop on your walk? Did he poop while we slept? You have to praise him if he poops outside. Let's read more on the internet about how to get dogs to poop outside!" Poop poop poop poop poop! "The bad news is that he pooped inside. The good news is that it's not runny anymore." POOP!!!!!! "Dio, do you need to poop! Poop, Dio, poop!"
If I see you in the next couple of weeks, be assured that I will bring up dog poop at some point; this is so interesting to me, it must be to everyone else, right? If you are an especially good friend, you might ask about poop first - this will give us something to discuss and make me feel that my life still has some value to others. I'm assuming that this problem will eventually go away, with enough outside-poop-praise and consistent walks but for now, it occupies about half of my brain at any given time. I imagine this must be what it's like to have children, if you multiplied it by ten thousand billion. This is good to consider, as doing so calms my raging baby lust. My uterus has shut up for the moment as my brain overloads it with the stress of caring for another creature.
All of that aside, we have a wonderful, sweet, beautiful dog who I adore. Huskies are very smart and ours likes to test us from time to time, but as long as we remind ourselves that we are the humans and he is the dog, we do fine. I just hope he doesn't grow thumbs.