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Great news. Something happened today. I have a subject for a blog!
My dog did a massive loose shit all over the kitchen floor. Hooray!
I came down at 6.45am to be greeted with an unpleasant smell in the kitchen and quickly located the pool of dog excrement near to the cooker. It was a lot more shit than my dog usually does in one go and the consistency of melting ice cream. I had to clear it up before anyone else came down and so my day started with me getting pretty close to dry retching as I mopped up dog cack with a towel and some paper towels. The towel was old and dirty (it’s one we use to dry the dog if its been raining. I got all the dirty stuff into a bag and put it in the bin, which thankfully was about an hour away from being emptied. Then I Dettoled the floor and gave it another clean with a paper towel and then, just in case mopped the whole floor. I had the extractor fans on and by the time the family came down there was just the usual level of colon smell over breakfast.
Wolfie has been taking the lockdown hard and it’s very confusing for her to be moved back and forth and I suspect she likes it more at my in-laws than she does here. But this was a result of nervous confusion, rather than a dirty protest. I am pretty used to and adept at cleaning up faeces nowadays, but even for me this was a challenging job. But I love my dog and I could not be cross with her, even though the rest of us have held it together and hardly shitted on the floor at all.
Out of shame or confusion or because this is what she’s been doing at my in-laws Woilfie spent some time in the garden. My daughter was upset, thinking that Wolfie didn’t like us anymore, but we explained that Wolfie didn’t know what was going on because we can’t talk dog language and let her know about the virus and she’s missing her lunchtime walk with her dog friends. We compared it to Phoebe not going to school and seeing her friends, in what could have been a brilliant bit of parenting allowing Phoebe to express her own unhappiness. Bit Phoebe said she didn’t mind about that, “because I have you.”
I am pretty sure she just meant her mum there, but I am still going to take it and it’s still nice to know that she’s feeling relatively OK about this madness. The boy is too young to understand but luckily idolises his big sister and I think is delighted to get to be with her so much (not entirely mutual). I hope we are starting to return to normal, but I want to return to normal so much that I think I’d be prepared to convince myself everything will be OK.
You can see the psychological effects on a dog more easily (especially if they express themselves through diarrhoea) but what stresses is it putting on us. And what will happen when we take the cork out of this bottle?
