I love dogs.
I love my dogs. I mean look at them. I’ve had a great line of awesome rescue dogs that have blessed my life.
But sometimes? Sometimes horrible things happen. Things that seem like they should not happen in real life. Things that seem like they should only happen in horror movies.
One of those things? Well, once the dog, the big dog, the big dog with the massive bladder let loose the contents of her bladder on hardwood floor of the upstairs hallway.
We discovered this because there was a puddle on the downstairs floor.
“What is that?” the man asked.
“Um… pee?”
“That’s not pee.”
“It smells like pee.”
“It can’t be pee. It’s dripping from the ceiling.”
And I foolishly said, “It really smells like pee.”
The man then unleashed a massive stream of cursing that really belonged in record books. He vaulted up the stairs and cursed more.
“The BAD WORD BAD WORD BAD WORDING BAD WORD dog BAD WORDED AND BAD WORDED up here.”
“It will be okay,” I said.
“It is so not okay,” the man said.
I grabbed paper towels and bleach spray and bleach wipes and headed up the stairs.
The man grabbed a mop and bucket and continued to swear.
“Urine is literally dripping from our ceiling. OUR CEILING!”
The dog went out on the porch, which would have been a much better place for her to unleash the contents of her doggy bladder of Olympian size.
This whole event happened immediately after we came upstairs because the basement had flooded. Our basement had never flooded before. There had been two inches of rain and I guess it inspired basement flooding and doggy bladders?
Yeah. I’m reaching there.
Anyway, this all happened during a day in which nothing went right, but I totally held it together anyways. This happened during a day where the one thing I was looking forward to for AN ENTIRE YEAR got cancelled because a projector at a movie theater broke.
It happened.
The dog had a massive accident. The accident found a knot in the wood and dripped through it onto the kitchen floor.
It was messy and disgusting and swear worthy.
And we survived. Right?
I love dogs and people and humanity, but man… if we don’t mess things up beautifully sometimes.
But what matters is loving through it, surviving through it, continuing through it.
And also bleach wipes.
Bleach wipes are important.
One time when I was a emergency dispatcher, I came home and Tala and Scotty, my then-dogs, greeted me at the door, all doggy happy. Scotty, was my new dog and he was a rescue dog from Alabama who was in a kill shelter and for a long time we had thought that he was perhaps a grandpa who likes crawfish and BudLite a lot and was somehow caught in a dog’s body – like he was a shapeshifter who got stuck. He had a puncture wound in his neck when he got here, two small holes. So, I think a vampire is to blame.
He’d also been shot.
His tongue had also been flayed and had healed, but one side didn’t work.
You know I’m a grandpa in real life – a human grandpa who likes BudLite.
Before that night, I had already witnessed him:
1. Get ice out of the refrigerator.
2. Use his paw on a door handle to open a door.
And now, he did this….
Do you see that? It’s a drawer that was COMPLETELY shut when I left the house. This means he grabbed it with his mouth and got it open at least a little bit and then he either wedged his nose in or something and opened it more.
Why would he do that? Oh, he was probably sick of dog food and bored because I was gone. Which is bored doggy behaviour, I know, but I present more evidence….
This was just part of the mess the dogs made. Notice the bottle of corn syrup was still standing up? Would a dog do that?
“No! A dog would not do that,” said Tala. “A dog would do this! Look at all that powdered sugar mixed with shoe! Yummy! I give it 5 stars!!!”
Side note: Dog saliva combined with powdered sugar on a wood floor creates a glue-like paste that is impossible to vacuum or mop up. It must be attacked with Clorox bleach wipes. I swear. I did not know this that night.
And finally, though they ate peanut butter chips and brown sugar and confectioner’s sugar and Crisco shortening and Shepard’s Pix mix and Italian seasoning mix, they did NOT eat this….
Do you know what that is? It is chocolate!!! Chocolate KILLS dogs. And they left it, only tearing open the end. I sort of imagine Scotty holding Tala back and saying, “Baby. It smells good, but it’s poison. It will kill us. Let’s go lick up the sugar.”
See? I swear he was human!
You know it, baby. Now go get me a beer while I lick the sugar off this here rug.
I miss Tala and Scotty and all the dogs I’ve had before. I miss them even though they weren’t perfect. I miss them even though they had flaws. That’s the thing, if the living creatures we love are flawed? That doesn’t mean they aren’t worthy of love. That doesn’t mean they aren’t worthy of our love.
Nobody’s perfect. Not even a dog. But that’s okay. It just means that they are real.
WRITING NEWS
Yep, it’s the part of the blog where I talk about my books and projects because I am a writer for a living, which means I need people to review and buy my books or at least spread the word about them.
I’m super good at public image and marketing for nonprofits but I have a much harder time with marketing myself.
So, please buy one of my books. 🙂 The links about them are all up there in the header on top of the page. There are young adult series, middle grade fantasy series, stand-alones for young adults and even picture book biographies.
CARRIE’S APPEARANCES
I’ll be at Book Expo America in NYC on June 1 at 11:30 – 12 at the Lerner booth signing copies of the Spy Who Played Baseball. A week before that,
I’ll also be in NYC presenting to the Jewish Book Council . Come hang out with me!
I’ll be at Sherman’s Bookstore in Bar Harbor on April 28 from 1-2.
To find out more about my books, there are links in the header. And if you buy one? Thank you so much. Let me know if you want me to send you a bookplate.
PODCAST
The podcast DOGS ARE SMARTER THAN PEOPLE is still chugging along with over 3,000 listens.
Thanks to all of you who keep listening to our weirdness as we talk about random thoughts, writing advice and life tips.
We’re sorry we laugh so much… sort of. Please share it and subscribe if you can.
THE CLASS AT THE WRITING BARN
The awesome six-month-long Writing Barn class that they’ve let me be in charge of!? It’s happening again in July. Write! Submit! Support! is a pretty awesome class. It’s a bit like a mini MFA but way more supportive and way less money. We’ll be having a Zoom class to learn more about it and I’ll share the details as soon as they are official.
