It all comes from dog trauma. There is the foster dog. There is the family dog. And there has been the tension of when the foster dog will go away to bother our family no more. How does she bother me? Let me count the ways... She barks, all the time. She digs, like a steam shovel. She escapes with elan. She has attacked our neighbor dog, and knocked over our elderly neighbor in the process, after busting out our back door. She does not listen. She table surfs during dinner if we are not watching closely. She does not care about the humans opinions. She pulls like a badger when on the leash, and runs like the wind when off. She is aggressive with 80% of female dogs we come in contact with. We can barely take her out of the house, much less on trails, trips, and camping. She is not the dog for us. And, apparently she has very tasty poo.
We have known this for a long time now. Our good dog has one flaw. He likes to eat her poo. This is just about the grossest thing on the planet, and we cannot wait for it to be solved by her departure. It cannot come soon enough. Today we finally got a call from her owner, and it looks like she will be going home by Thanksgiving. Hallelujah! That was a wonderful moment. 20 minutes later Jack was in the bath because he had somehow become covered in her poo, head, back, side. He was a gross and disgusting mess, like never before. He must have been anticipating her departure too. That was an infuriating moment. A frustrating, infuriating, Now-we-have-had-ENOUGH moment. Makes you want to scream. I held back quite well, I thought, and barely let out a peep. I had it all under control, until after dinner. Our good dog needed to go out, so I had him on the leash, and then the other one was scrambling to get out the door too. I grabbed her collar, tried to hold him back, and opened the door to reach for the lead outside for her. In the process, pissed as all hell, I didn't see the metal door catch on the door frame.
You never really know how fast you are moving, until you hit something. It is harder to see things when you are pissed as all hell. And you may never really know how much patience you have until you live with shit eating, barking, pulling, running, digging, attacking dogs. If I am very lucky, this particular life lesson will be completed around Thanksgiving and my bruise will have faded by then. Pass the gravy.
ps I should also reveal that this all came about because I was trying to find another Lucky Dog. I was trying to make something happen that had happened as a gift. Ungrateful for what I had, I pushed too hard and came up with Sofie. Today the saga closed and it looks like Sofie will be going to her home, and today it is two years since I put Lucky down.
2 comments:
Bittersweet post. Two whole years,but so not forgotten. Sophie will probablel not be soon forgotten either, unfortunately. Yeah, to a new home. Now THAT is something to be thankful for!!
Beth if you haven't tried it already, try dusting their food with Accent meat tenderizer. Do this for a week or so and see if the poo eating stops. There's also a veterinary product called Forbid that makes poo taste bad. Well, relatively speaking :-)
your cuz the vet
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