Displeasure is an understatement. Dog poop indoors is never a happy event. There really is no good place for a dog to poop indoors but that doesn’t stop them from finding the absolute worst place and using it. This morning Ken said he had cleaned dog poop up in the living room. “Odd” I thought. No dog had been in the house so long as to have had an accident but I didn’t give it a whole lot of thought because I hadn’t seen it and there seems to be a correlation between the vision and the amount of upset.

If seeing poop contributes to how much it upsets you, sitting in it is far more upsetting and that is just what I did when I sat at my desk to have my coffee. I jumped a mile (I don’t even know what words escaped me but I’m glad there are no small children or nuns in my house.)

After cleaning that mess up I had a different concern. The poop I sat in did not appear to be well dog poop (an idea that is substantiated by its being in the house). My dogs had not even eaten yet so someone had clearly gotten into something. No one seemed sick so I didn’t worry too much.

Fast forward a couple of hours. The dogs go out into the yard and disappear to the end of the yard they rarely go to. Remember that end of the yard? Go back to January 27 and read about Yucky dogs… that end of the yard. They are right back in the spot where the grease spill was last time. I go to investigate and low and behold there is a big pile of leftover food. Visible to the eye is lots of corn, some mushrooms, some tomatoes (and a large bone that Deva is chewing on). This is clearly food that has been clearly dumped over the fence into my yard.

You know, back when the grease was in that spot I felt kind of guilty for blaming my neighbor for dumping a pot of grease into my yard. That’s a pretty weird thing to blame on someone if you didn’t see it happen and I always like to give people the benefit of the doubt. Today’s incident removed all doubt. SOB dumped a pot of food in my yard. This time I was mad.

It has always been said in my family that we have “Irish tempers” as if claiming it as an inheritance makes our angry actions justifiable. I have had, at many times in my life, difficulty after the fact in justifying my actions so I try to be a little careful even if I am justifiably mad. I don’t want to burn any bridges. I went to visit my neighbor and told him I had a problem with food being thrown over my fence. He knew nothing about it but did remember his wife sending his son outside with a pot of leftovers to dump it. He didn’t know about the fryer either but apparently it sounded believable to him. He assumed (as a parent so foolishly and innocently would) that his child disposed of it in an acceptable manner and assured me that it would not happen again.

I thanked him and turned around to come home when he asked me what was going on with the dead tree in my yard. (I didn’t know there was a dead tree in my yard but maybe this is as dumb as not knowing you shouldn’t dump leftovers into someone’s yard.) He pointed it out to me and said he had mentioned it to Ken and was wondering what Ken planned to do. I know this game and again I considered getting Irish on his ass. My dead tree has absolutely nothing to do with his son’s transgressions and I wasn’t about to start playing who’s the most negligent neighbor with him. “You’ll have to talk to Ken about that again” I said. “I don’t know anything about it.”

Now I suppose I’ll have to start worrying about a dead tree falling on my house, or my neighbor’s house but hopefully I won’t have to worry about food being thrown into my yard.

It’s always something.

I really don’t like gross yucky stuff. I also don’t like the corner of my yard that is overgrown. That’s the same corner that backs up to the corner of my neighbor’s yard and his junk pile.  We all sort of pretend that area isn’t there.  I hate when the dogs go in there (because that is where snakes are more likely to be) but they only dash through occasionally when they feel the need to chase the cats. (The same cats they never chase in the house. Go figure.)

There aren’t many things I don’t like about dogs but the ones there are have to do with my aversion to yuckyness. Dogs will touch anything and anything they will touch they will lick and if it is really nasty (read: dead) they will roll around in it.

My dogs will play in the yard like the wolf decedents they are but they don’t stay out very long and almost never in the dark.  When they do play I don’t leave them long by themselves or they dig and digging gets them dirty. Yuck.

Last night I let the poodles out to pee before bed. They were out for a few minutes and I went to call them in. No one listened to me. It’s not unusual for someone to lag or maybe even ignore my first call but they never all ignore me. Panama and Brighid are usually in so fast I am hoping they really went pee. But last night, nothing.  I called again. Still nothing. I grabbed my whistle. This is for serious recall. They always come, every dog 100% of the time when I use the whistle. I blow a short blast on the whistle. Panama comes running followed by Brighid but no one else.Well, this is annoying. I’m in my slippers and it’s chilly and three poodles are paying no attention to me.

When a dog ignores you or reacts in a way completely different from what you expect it’s always a good time for a training session. Well it was 11:30 pm and I was in no mood for a training session. I was in the mood for quiet dogs INSIDE the house and in the mood for bed.  I put my boots on and walked down to the end of the yard they were in, that area they almost never go in, and coaxed them into the house.

It was very apparent that they’d been into something but I couldn’t figure out what it could be. There was a greasy smell, like the shirt of someone who has worked at McDonalds all day.  The dogs looked greasy. Their ear feathering was dirty and greasy and their paws were filthy. I thought chicken but it really didn’t smell like chicken.  I was baffled. And very annoyed.  If there was something like that in my yard, someone put it in my yard.  I got concerned about the possibility of someone putting something poisoned in my yard but that fear faded as they remained perky and no one developed a stomach problem. I was baffled and I had a houseful of dirty dogs.

For the first time in ages everyone slept in crates. This morning before I let them out I got dressed and put on boots and braced myself for whatever I would find out there. Then I let them lead me to it.  I’m still baffled about what I found but my only guess is that my neighbor (or his kid) dumped the grease from a fryer either at the fence line or over the fence.  There was an area that was just greasy. The grass and leaves were clearly covered with grease. The dogs were licking it, digging in the greasy dirt and loving it.

How do you clean this kind of mess up? It took me a while to think of anything and I’m not sure that my solution was a good one. I went inside and got the bucket of kitty litter and dumped a layer of kitty litter all over the greasy area. Either that will absorb it and we’ll worry about cleaning up the kitty litter later or the dogs will still be attracted to it and they’ll be covered in greasy kitty litter. I’m not sure which will happen but I’m sure hoping for the first option. In the meantime I had to bathe all 5 poodles (and wash the couches. Thank God for leather furniture.)

Five wet poodles sitting under the solar dryer.

Dog’s birthdays are lots of fun. You can make a huge fuss if you want to or you can skip it entirely. It’s all for you and it’s all up to you. Not that the dogs don’t love a party. They do. Especially the food part. And the toys but mostly the food.

I confess that many years ago I used to make fun of people who talked about things their dogs liked. Not typical dog things like riding in cars. Everyone can tell if a dog likes to ride in a car (and most do) but about other things. I really didn’t believe people could know that their dog liked being in dog shows or going certain places or even wearing clothes but dogs do have a lot of preferences and they are pretty good at making them known. With Panama there are levels of liking.

He would rather go anywhere I go than have to stay home without me so he was happy to be at Coastline Pet Supply (wonderful store) trying on sweaters for his birthday and seeing if he would fit into the various travel bags. He didn’t not like it because he was doing it with me but when we got to the aisle with the bulk treats (in bins, not wrapped) he moved up to the next level of liking.  He licked his chops in that “this is what I’m talking about” way that said he could hardly contain himself and didn’t know what treat to pick.

In the end we really made it a pretty low key birthday. Although I had bought party hats and streamers and treats and a couple of new toys I blew off making the (healthy) cake.  A lot of what I wanted to do was for the sake of pictures. Panama was ecstatic to find that we had hot dogs for his birthday. (These are a very special treat that we get very rarely because we try for more healthy treats.) He wasn’t real happy that he had to wear a birthday hat to get the treat. I put the hat on him a couple of times and then his big brown eyes caught my heart.  I decided that from that point on we’d celebrate for him, not for me and I didn’t make him wear the hat. He got hot dog bits for doing nothing more than sitting. (You all HAVE to sit to get your treats) He, and the rest of the paque, had a good time and there were no pictures until this one I got of him later.  This is my beloved friend at 11 years old. Happy Birthday Panama Red!!