TheBanyanTree: Hound Dog Blues

[B Drummond]

Topics Not Mentioned by Pet Shop Sales Staff:


Thanksgiving holidays found the Voof-Pup (Ruffy, the all-around, super 
deluxe, mixed breed, hound dawg) with an upset in his breadbasket.  

On the return trip from the Florida Panhandle, about 10 miles from 
Grandma's house - with about 200 miles more to go in the journey - his 
tummy began to rumble.  I could hear it and thought that a little 
strange. After a few minutes he let out a silent, code red, biotoxin in 
a gaseous form.  I thought that he had either pooped on the seat or I 
had stepped in something.  I checked the seat and it was clean.  I 
checked my shoes and they were not the source either.

"Ruffy!" I hollered.  "What have you done to me?" I said as I rolled 
down the window in the freezing weather to try to dilute the deadly 
biotoxins that drifted with mortal abandon in the cab of the truck.  
His reaction? He just looked at me with an Alfred E Neuman, "What me 
worry?" stare.  I thought about putting him in the back of the truck but 
the weather was too cold for that.  He had to ride shotgun with me up 
front and I was stuck with that.

For 200 miles I had to endure the most foul farts that ever emanated
from betwixt any dog's anal glands.  He'd let them rip, those silent 
killers, every 10 to 15 minutes and by the time I got home I was 
chilled to the bone from the fresh air I had to let in, and my nose, 
well, it felt like it had had a corkscrew run up it.

We finally got home and I took him outside later for his bathroom break 
and he produced something he never has:  a very loose bowel movement.  
Oh, I thought, he's just got a sour stomach. I thought that was the end 
of that.

Monday morning I went to his cage to let him out and was greeted with 
malodorous salutations in the form of liquid dog poop in his cage - 
something he has never done before.  I let him out and he tracked the 
stuff all over the carpet before I could corral him.  After cleaning 
the carpet, and his dog box, and his bed "linen", and him, I put him 
back in it with a fresh bunch of bed linen.  I took the old bed linen 
to the washer, ran it through a cycle and then dried it.   Just in time 
for him to soil the bedding that I had put in earlier in the morning. 

Today is the third day that he has the runs.  Took him to the vet 
because I was starting to think he might have parvo or something. Vet 
says that he has enteritis from eating different foods during 
Thanksgiving,  prescribed antibiotics, a bland diet and rest.  

I have washed his filty linen for the umpteenth time in the last 3 days 
and I am sick of smelling dog poop.  I have cleaned the spots on the 
carpet where he couldn't quite hold off until I could get him out the 
door and into the yard.  I've smelled so much dog manure that I swear I  
smell it in my dreams and that doesn't make for restful sleep, let me 
tell you.

Ruffy, my dog of dogs, is looking less and less like a pet to me today 
and more like a barkin',  liquid-poop-squirtin', olfactory-rending, out 
of control hound from pit of hell itself.

The vet says that this too shall pass.  I agree (but let it pass out in 
the yard, please, Ruffy, please!)


  bd
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