Little Miss Sh*t for Brains

This is not the first time I've had dog shit in my purse. (See also, The Shit Show, Part I, Deux, and Tres). Probably won't be the last, either, if I'm being honest with myself.

Sometimes I allow my mind to visit this pretty little imaginary place where my morning goes smoothly and everyone gets to their final destinations in a timely manner and I make it through the day without having to come into contact with anyone else’s literal or figurative shit. Inevitably something comes crashing down on this sweet little pipe dream. For example, a tree.

Or, as was the case this day, actual shit.

The night before was basically consistent with what I’ve come to expect from life. DM and I were exhausted so we went to bed early so we could get a full night’s sleep for once in our lives. Hahaha. Hilarious, right? Naturally, we were awoken at 2am by the unmistakable sound of a dog about to barf. Now, little Nacho is kind of a puker so I wasn’t too worried at first. But around the 8th time we started to get concerned.

DM informs me that the dogs had actually eaten a little bit of this scrubber sponge. Normally I would assume this was less of a big deal than the Advil she ate last month, or the grapes, legos, beads, ant bait, rocks, shoes, pencils, markers, bouncy balls, and sharp sticks she and her big sister Feta have consumed in their short lives, but the repeated retching didn’t seem right. (Also, we were on high alert because for the first 12 hours after “The Advil Incident,” we (idiotically) thought, "Eh, I’m sure she’ll be fine, it was just a couple, and she pukes on the regular so it’s probably not that big a deal." Turns out it is a very big, very expensive deal.)

Is there a CPS for dogs? Please don’t call them. I swear we take mostly great care of our animals. I already read plenty of scolding comments on the internet about how you have to be EXTREMELY CAREFUL and NEVER EVER LET THEM OUT OF YOUR SIGHT FOR EVEN ONE TINY SECOND. Unfortunately, I cannot even maintain that standard of oversight for my human children, so… sorry dogs. Plus Nacho is a super sneaky little honey badger who steals things from the kids when we aren’t looking and secrets them away in the corner of the yard to consume at her leisure. She’s like a furry hoarding magpie.

Anyway, my helpful husband took Nacho to the vet at 3am. They gave her all manner of medicines, including what appears to have been a laxative. Told us to keep a close eye on her so I planned to bring her to the office with me. She’s pretty chill so no big deal.

We get a couple hours more sleep. Woke up and started my morning with a familiar refrain: “What is that smell?!?” I wasn’t able to place it. There weren’t any obvious piles of poop or vomit that I could see. We go about our harried routine. As we’re headed out the door I scoop up the little dog and suddenly discover the source of the smell. The poor thing had shat herself and her furry backside was covered in poop soup. One shitty sitz bath, one butt-trim, and two wardrobe changes (for me) later, I not-so-stealthily sneak her into the office with me. As it turns out, this was ill-advised. 

First of all, what do you do when you have to pee while you're in the middle of a covert office dog operation? In the past, I just held it all day because I was afraid she'd bark and out me. This time I was worried about barking AND pooping/puking. But, conveniently, I had a UTI, so holding it was not an option. So the first time, I brought her in the bathroom with me. If you have never peed with a dog on your lap, well, you have not really lived. The second time I devised a temporary dog tote :)

Someone came into my office and said it smelled like wet dog. Which made sense because there was a wet dog in it. But eau de wet dog is infinitely preferable to the smell of projectile liquid dog doo, which was part two of my sickly-office-dog-adventure. I quickly spirited her back to my car and home again, leaving a foul trail of poop particles in our wake. (Have I talked about poop particles before? It's a pet subject of mine. One of my cousins just had her PhD thesis about "the semantic maps that tile the human cerebral cortex" published on the cover of Nature magazine. Me? I like to write infrequent potty-mouthed blogs on poop and preschool. Must be a genetic thing. ;))

Anyway. We thought Nacho was better but then there was more puking and bloody projectile poop two days later, so back to the vet. Then back to the vet again with a fecal sample, hence the purse-o-shit. Wheeee! This dog has seriously been to the vet 8 times in the past 2 months. When we left this time, they said, "Nacho, here's the deal, we don't want to see you back here for AT LEAST 7 days!" She is the most expensive free dog EVER. A friend suggested we let evolution take over at this point, but Colby loves that dog more than anything on earth and would be devastated. Also, she's really cute when not covered in poop. (The dog. Also the kid.)

Then Tuesday The Boy had to go under for dental surgery, so, naturally, the girl woke up at 3am with the barfs, arms outstretched with two generous handfuls of puke. Jesus loves me.

At least the dentist gave us some new toothbrushes. I think this will really help Colby gain some closure after I threw away her old toothbrush the other day, which she wanted to keep "for decoration" (obviously). (I'll have you know I actually fished it out of the kids' bathroom garbage can which is a category 5 biohazard zone. But, of course, it was already RUINED.)

Sometimes I get super annoyed that I get passed over for promotions at work and then I'm like, oh, yeah, I've had to call into work three times in the past ten days covered in bodily fluids that are not mine. (And then I think, No. Fuck that. I bust my ass, early in the morning, late at night, on the weekend, whatever I need to do to get shit done, WHILE COVERED IN PUKE AND/OR EXCREMENT! Beat that, single childless 27 year old male associate! But more on that another day ;))

Incidentally, this isn't my first experience with bleeding Pomeranian buttholes. My "avatar" of Jack and Blue in diapers was from a charming little adventure where my husband was out partying overnight ON OUR ANNIVERSARY (with my blessing, an old friend was in town). But seriously, every time he leaves, shit hits the fan. In this case, literally. On this occasion, he fed the dog a cooked pork bone before he left, which basically splintered in her digestive tract and had the effect on the back end that you would imagine. Thank goodness my BFF Claire was able to come sit with sleeping baby while I took Blue to the emergency vet. Good times, good times.

So yeah. Then, last night, just to keep things interesting, Nacho tried to eat a printer cartridge. Thank the good lord she only ended up with blue paws and not colorful and explosive diarrhea. 

NEVER A DULL MOMENT, FAM.