A Bag of Poo and a Bad Decision

A Time to Poo

I had to get some dinner.  My idea was to go to Whole Foods and pick up something from the buffet.  My only hesitation was Corky.

Corky is relaxing in the wheelwell on the drive home.

Corky generally doesn't poo at school.  He saves it for 5 pm at home.  It was nearing 5 pm and we were not at home.  We were pulling up to Whole Foods.

It was the Pooing Hour.

Corky and I got out of the car and I walked him over to a grassy median where I tried to get him to busy.  He wandered around sniffing.  He finally peed halfheartedly and sniffed a bit more.  I knew there was more in there. I stood my ground.

Corky turned in a half circle and then back again.  Aha! Got him. He did a half squat and then shift and started to poo.  Success! I was so stoked.  I got out my poo bags. They were electric yellow and could be seen from the moon.

"Good boy, Corky!" Corky wagged his tail.  He looked at the yellow bag and looked away.  It may have hurt his eyes.  They were bright.  I tied the bag into a knot to prevent any stink from escaping and began to walk toward Whole Foods to throw it away in one of their trash cans.

Now, here is where it gets a bit tricky.  As you approach Whole Foods, there is an eating area off to the right.  I certainly didn't want to walk up to that area and wave my big bag of poo around with diners: "Hey! Got some poo here! Look!  Does this make you want to eat your food?!"

Fortunately, I had parked to the left and my approach was away from the diners.  I was hiding the bright yellow bag (haha, as if you could hide that bag) by my side.  I started to look for trash cans.

Nothing. Not one trash can.

Really, Whole Foods? No trash cans?

A shot of a Whole Foods shopping bag.

I'm standing by a planter with a big bright yellow bag of poo.  What now?  Take it into the store? Certainly not! I can't even take it close to the door.  IT'S POO! LOTS OF POO.

What store doesn't have trash cans?

OK.  I set my bag of dog poo down on the ground and say to anyone listening, "I will be back for this bag of poo," and I walk away.

I leave the yellow bag of poo and Corky and I walk into the store.  I did turn to look and it glowed back at me accusingly. POO, POO.

There was nothing to be done.

A Bad Decision

And that wasn't my bad decision.  My bad decision was settling for a basket and not a cart.  I thought the basket would be easier to maneuver.

I walked Corky into the buffet area and got a wet wipe out of his coat and wiped my hands off. I didn't want to touch anything without cleaning my hands.  That done, I went over to the plates.

I grabbed two plates and pulled them apart.  I dropped them into the basket.  I didn't notice that the plates didn't sit flat.  I grabbed two tops and spent three minutes trying to get them apart while Corky tried to sniff at them and at the basket.

Then we walked over to the buffet area.  Corky was very good.  He didn't lunge or jerk around.  He was very calm and sweet.  I quickly realized that when I filled a plate that it wouldn't sit flat in the basket.

Really, Whole Foods? What good are your baskets?

So now I am staring at Corky, my useless basket, my filled plate and my unfilled plate.  How will I fill the unfilled plate and how will I get both plates to the checkout counter?

Close-up of Corky looking sweet.

Finally, I got Corky to stay and put the basket in an out of the way spot and put the filled plate in an out of the way spot and filled up my second plate.  Then I stacked the two plates on top of each other and Corky and I ran very fast to the checkout area.

Not an elegant solution, but it worked.

Everything was put in a paper bag and now I had a handle.  I left and picked up my yellow bag of poo  (which was still there!!) on the way out, which I carried home to throw away in my trash can.  

Corky 1

Poo 1

Cheryl 1

Whole Foods -3

Doomed to Fail

 Last night we took Coach to the Fall Play at school.  Fred warned me that it wasn't a good idea, but we were up against a wall: today is our 21st wedding anniversary, tomorrow we have dinner plans, and if we didn't take Coach with us, it was too long to leave him in the crate.

No choice, but to take him.

Evidently Mr. Coach had been feeling his nearly 7 month old oats all day long.  I suspect that his body had been surging with testosterone and while he is always calm and mostly dour, with this new hormone racing through him, he is feeling out of sorts and strange.

I found him racing through the house and careening off the walls.  Where had my calm boy gone?  Surely dinner would do the trick?

He ate it.  Sure.  But he had pooped at 4, so the poo schedule was off.  Never a good thing.  Willow was begging to be left alone.  We gathered up all his gear and piled him in the car.

Off we went to Panera where he decided that he would not go quietly under that table.  Instead he yanked out all the napkins that had been placed under a leg to keep the table level.  Lovely. Then he proceeded to lung after imaginary specks of bread.  In PANERA.  The place has specks of bread floating in the air.  Coach was in constant motion under the table.  Here's a speck, no, wait, it's over here.

Sigh. Dinner was a brief affair.

We hightailed it to the school.  Then we walked around and were almost late trying to get the boy to poo.  I knew he had to go.  But no.  He was stubborn and would not poo.

So we reluctantly went into the Lykes Center, but we chose a seat in the back row on the aisle.  Near the exit.  We knew.  It was only a matter of time.

Coach is lying on the floor of the Lykes Center before he has his whining fit.

Coach began the evening by courteously removing all trash from his vicinity with his teeth and trying to eat it.  I removed every piece under the cover of darkness: a piece of wire, a piece of cellophane, gum.

Then the crying started.  Whine, whine.  

"Shh.  No noise." Gentle tug on leash.  I tried to reposition him.  He was antsy.  The musical was in full force.  You couldn't hear anything the kids were singing so loud.  They were amazing.  It was wonderful.  And yet, all I could think was, "Does this whine carry forward three rows?" Because in rows that is where some parents are.  

More movement from Coach.  I finally decided it was time for him to poo.  We went outside and sure enough, he had to go.  I put it in a bag and tossed it in one of the many trash cans around campus and hurried back in.  My false hope was that he would now be calm.

No.  He was not.

He was a whiny baby.  And for the next few minutes as we tried to listen to great comedy and singing, Coach made sure we knew he was unhappy and wanted to go home.  He did not like musical theater.

So, we left.

But I woke up at in the middle of the night and remembered that I had deposited his poo in a prohibited trash can.  You see, three years ago, when I had Bingo, he had pooped by the Lykes Center and I had innocently bagged it and thrown it in the trash cans near the middle division deck.  

In my haste to get back to the play, I did again.  I had been told that the poo bag had sat in the trash and baked and all the kids who sat and ate lunch there complained of an awful stench.  I could not be blamed again for ruining everyone's lunch because of dog poo.  We had to do a poo stealth removal.

Coach and I are walking to the offending bag of poo.

We waited until the entire middle division was in convocation so no one would witness me rooting around in the trash.

We've found the trash can where the poo is.

Here is the deck and the trash can where the poo is.  It needs to be removed.  

I'm peering into the trash can as Coach sits by my feet.

I opened the trashcan hoping that lots of trash hadn't been piled on top of the poo. And I was in luck. You could see the poo right away!  I could grab the bag and be on my way.

I reach into the trash to grab the poo.

Here we are walking off to find a safe trash can.

Now all we have to do is find a trash can that isn't near an eating area.

Dropping off our deposit into a safe trash can!

Success!  Poo has been relocated!  Now, I need to wash my hands!  What a Friday.  

Catching Poo: Oops, I did it again!

The morning did not start out well.  For starters, I had stayed up late watching Dexter.  (Note to self, DVR it! My days of staying up past 10 pm are long gone!) So, when the alarm went off, I was none too happy.  But I proceeded to get up and greet the day.  Coach was his usually calm self.  He rarely gets giddy in the morning.  Or at any time frankly.

We fixed up a peanut butter kong for him and had a minor mishap when Fred went to toss it in the car and missed and tossed it somewhere in the dark. He did find it though, even though it was a black kong, at 6:45 am in the pitch dark.  

"Found it!" Go Fred!  He placed it in the car.  Coach hops in and starts to lick the kong.  I give Fred a kiss goodbye.  

At School

Once we arrive at school, I lead Coach over to what I call the Horton Hears a Who flowers, but he isn't interested in doing his business.  He wants to smell the flowers.  

OK.  Fine.

We go inside the library.

I remember that today is book club.  In my calendar, today is also the department chair meeting.  Crap.  I've messed up.  I need to reschedule all of my book clubs!  What a major pain.  So I send out a long email explaining what I did and how we have to redo the meeting dates and choose from the following options.  Then Tim sends me an email that says the department chair meeting is on Wed.  Double crap.  Now I have to send an email saying I'm an idiot.

Isn't that lovely?  So I send that out.  What a great day.  I look at Coach.  Let's go tell Tim thank you for saving me more embarrassment.  So we start out for the upper division offices.  

Tim with Coach. Tim is sitting on the imagine bench and Coach is in a down stay beside him.

Coach and I go up the stairway and down the hall.  We stop to chat with Michele and then continue down the hall to Tim's office.  I turn left into his office and as I am about to sit down, I glance at Coach and notice that he is HUNCHING.

OMG!  I can't let this dog poop on Tim's carpet in his office after he just did this nice thing and saved me further embarrassment on all these emails.  So I did what evidently comes naturally to me: I put my hand behind Coach's butt and he pooped into it.

What was I thinking? With my other hand I raised up his hind end and said, in a slightly elevated tone of voice, "Tim! Get something!" Forgetting that I carry with me poop bags. I turn my head and all is lost because Coach has already left a big poo at the entrance of the office.  ACK!!

Now, you may be wondering what I was doing lifting his butt up in that air like that.  And to the uninitiated, it would seem like a foolish thing to do, but it so happens that when HRH Berkeley was in mid pee I grabbed her hind end and she immediately quit peeing.  So, here I was, mid-poo, as it were, with a new dog and I thought, "If it worked with one dog, surely it will work with this one." You can see where I am going with this can't you? So I picked up his rear end.

Oh no, brothers and sisters.  It did not work!  Rather it was like picking up a cannon. A loaded cannon. One you were going to aim and fire, because now I looked and there were THREE more pieces of poo on the floor and they must have SHOT OUT OF HIS BUTT WHILE I WAS HOLDING IT IN THE AIR.    I don't know what else could have happened. Holy crap.

Coach is bewildered by all of this.  Tim is laughing and talking it all very well and I... I am horrified and frantic.

"Wipes.  I need wipes."  I finally remember I HAVE poo bags and bag up all the poo. Sweet Kate Manley next door comes running over with wipes and hands me several and I think I actually barked at her for several more.  I blame my poo smeared hands! I'm sorry Kate!

I scrubbed the carpet, I threw out the poo. Then I washed my hands over and over again.  Back at my office, I left Coach with Jan and rushed back to Tim's office with the diffuser and a fresh pad filled with lavender oil to dispel any remaining poo odor.

Tim was such a good sport.  And as other people told me throughout the day, at least it wasn't the headmaster's office!

No Poo at Dinner!

Last night we took a chance and took the baby out to dinner.  Some nights he doesn't poo until 10 pm, but we have been very vigilant about taking him right out after dinner and then using the commanding voice to see if he will poo and last night we were successful!  Why do I mention specifically a "commanding voice"?

We were told a story at one of our meetings about some veterans in Southeastern's Paws for Patriots program who were working with their assistance dogs and one veteran was listening while another was working with his newly acquired dog.  After listening to him for a bit, he jumped in and said, "Soldier, are you asking your dog or telling him?"

I think about that story a lot.  Mostly because I don't naturally have a commanding voice.  So, I now find myself trying all sorts of different voices when I am out there with Coach because maybe, just maybe, that voice wasn't commanding enough. Perhaps it should be deeper. A bit more stern. No, that didn't work.  How about not so deep, but definitely serious. It's like the actor's studio in our back yard. I should add accents.

OMG.  The nuanced Busy Busy command. Honestly! Coach is my first puppy to mark the distinction between command and normal and happy voices.  He's very smart.

Back to dinner.  We had a 5 pm dog dinner and a 5:10 poo. Woot!  In the real world, people don't talk about poo this much, but in a Southeastern Guide Dog puppy raiser world, poo is very much on our minds: when they last pooped, have they pooped, was it a good poop, etc.  I had no idea I was going to care this much about excrement when I started this gig.

Anyway, since we had our poo, we were good on poo at least for a couple of hours, if not the rest of the evening.  The girls were arriving at 6 and Fred was able to elicit a pee at 5:55 (Fred's commanding voice comes very easily).  Coach is rather like a horse, saving it all up for one tremendously long pee that must be terribly satisfying for him.  Mind you, this is in spite of being taken out and given opportunities to pee. Again, commanding voice or my lack thereof! 

Lauren, Allison, Cheryl and Amber with Casa Tina's in the background.  I have Coach in front of me and have my arms circling him.

So here we are outside of Casa Tina's before our successful dinner outing. Allison's camera has given us a very flattering soft focus, and Coach is a bit of dark blur at the bottom.  But rest assured, he was awesome at dinner and slept through almost all of it.

Ooops! Did We Just Poop on Your Floor?

They say that sometimes when bad things happen, time slows down or your life flashes before your eyes.  What happened to me is that all sound ceased.  It was as if I existed in a perfectly silent bubble.

We had walked into the restaurant, with Coach and a former student who was visiting us and we were being shown to a table right in the middle of the dining room.  A table right in the middle of the dining room is usually never a good thing and why I didn't stop the girl right there and say, "This won't work, we need a booth." I don't know.  But I let her show us to the table.

She walked off and Allison walked over to her chair.  I pulled out my chair and Fred was about to pull out his chair when all of a sudden he said those word you never want to hear inside of a building, "Coach pooped."

And all the sound went away.  I turned and grabbed what was nearest: a cloth napkin.

I know! A cloth napkin! What was I thinking?  I had a big bag in my purse filled with shamwows and towels and ziploc bags and antibacterial wipes, but I was thinking THERE ARE PEOPLE EATING FOOD IN HERE AND I CAN'T LET THEM SMELL POO!

So I swoop down on the three sticks of poo and in my no sound world, the white napkin drifts down over the poo mountain like a little cloud.  There.  All. Gone.  I scoop it up and race away to the rest room.

I am shaking all over.  I zoom into a stall and start to empty the poo into the toilet.  Am I nuts?  What then? Am I going to rinse it out in the toilet?  Am I going to stick my hands in the toilet?  Holy crap, I'm still holding this poo napkin!  I look around in a panic and spot the sanitary napkin waste dispenser.  I shove the poo napkin in there.

I power walk back to the table.  Sound has returned.  Allison looks at me and says, "There's a little more poo under Fred's chair."

Crap on toast.  More poo?  I get out the anti-bacterial wipes and look around the room.  Everyone is eating and chatting and seemingly unaware that a mere three feet away from them there had been poo.  Thank the Gods above! I wipe and wipe and wipe the tile with anti-bacterial goodness.  I get the extra poo and wipe with more anti-bacterial goodness.  There is no poo smell, but my hands are filled with poo stained wipes.

Maybe a minute has gone by. Fred and Coach have disappeared and not returned.

By now, all the diners in our dining room must think I have a bathroom problem.  Some weird sort of intestinal disease that makes me run off several times during a meal or that I'm OCD and feel the need to fling my napkin on the floor, throw it away and then scrub the floor clean with anti-bacterial wipes before eating.  Whatever, as long as they don't realize that it was poo, I'm OK with being the crazy, nut job lady they tell their friends about over drinks at the bar later in the evening.

I race back to the restroom.  There is a woman in my stall.  MY STALL.  Rather, the stall with the poo napkin in it.  I go to another stall.  I toss out my nasty wipes and madly wash my hands over and over and over.  Then I look around for towels.  They have one of those Dysen Air Blades.  Oh Man!  We would have been screwed if we didn't have our own supplies!!!

The lady in my poo napkin stall comes out.  I sneak out of my stall and then go into the poo napkin stall.  It occurred to me that the poo napkin might start to become, well, odorous.  I started having visions of people coming in and sniffing and saying, "Something has died in here!"  And then going and getting management.  And then management wandering around the bathroom trying to figure out where the horrible smell was coming from until finally, they opened the sanitary napkin container and saw: poo napkin! Then it would be just a short step to wondering, "How did this get here?  Who pooped in our napkin?" And then they would think about the only missing napkin that night.

And it would be mine.

Therefore, I had to keep the poo napkin.  Fortunately, I carry ziploc baggies with me and so I just grabbed the poo napkin and shoved it into a ziploc and then into my supply bag.  I went back to the table where Fred and Allison wanted to know what we should do.

We decided that retreat was the better part of valor.  So we left and Fred called the restaurant and explained to management what had happened and apologized.  They were more concerned that Coach was ok.

They didn't want their napkin back.

Jam Will Never Poo Again!

Today we had our meeting at Countryside Mall.  So, since Jam was still feeling a little snakey about the backyard, I took him for a walk before the meeting.  We went around the block.  Wouldn't you know it, as soon as it looked like he had picked out a spot and was about to do something, the people who owned the house came out the front door (grandma and grandchild).  The little girl wanted to pet Jam.

All thoughts of poo immediately retreated, so to speak.  Jam was now more interested in the approaching people and I felt a vague need to take my plastic bag out of my pocket and wave it like a white flag as if to say, "See, if he had poo'ed in your yard, I would have picked it up.  I am a good neighbor."  Instead, I stood there awkwardly and looked a bit shifty eyed.

I moved Jam out to the sidewalk and said in a rather loud voice, "OK, Jam you need to sit." And then I made Jam sit and go down.  Jam is much more controlled in a down stay than in a sit.  When they got closer I explained about Jam's situation and that Jam needed to be calm in order to be petted.

Our new neighbor was AWESOME!  Everytime she approached, Jam would pop up and she would step back.  I would make him sit and down and then she would try again.  Until finally, he was calm.  By then her granddaughter had decided that Captain Crazypants was to crazy to pet and she didn't want to pet him.  But Annette did and Jam was very good.

I was so happy to meet such a nice neighbor.  And Jam was really tired out.  We were able to walk on two or three houses down before he had to poo.  Those neighbors stayed inside, thankfully.  

Guide dog puppy in training Jam sitting at food court table.

When we got to the meeting, Jam was anxious to meet everyone.  Fred thinks that if Jam is able to at least sniff all the dogs he is much better able to stay in the circle of acceptance than outside.  I don't know.  I just know that Jam had a good poo and was in the circle of acceptance and life was good.  I was even feeling very good about myself because just that morning I had cleaned the dogs' ears and part of the obedience was doing some of the tests from the AKC Canine Good Citizen Test, which includes having someone massage the ears and paws.  Little did I know another paw massage was coming up later (dum dum dum! foreshadowing!!).

Soon enough, AC Carolyn had sent us on our way and we were off to see what we could find on her list.  We did have one marking problem.  GRRR.  We have been avoiding all upright and vertical surfaces and keeping an eagle eye out for any slight veering to the left, but Jam got a quick one off on a planter.  I was able to clean it up quickly.  ShamWows are very good at cleaning up pee-sasters. Even small ones.  He never marks inside, but Malls are tricky and dogs can feel like they are outside.

Guide dog puppy in training Jam sitting in front of noisy arcade games.

We were still making our way around the mall with our older dog group when I happened to notice Jam's butt.  Frankly, I look at his butt a lot just to make sure he isn't holding anything back.  And sure enough, he had the gopher butt.

"Fred! He has to poo!"  Fred started to speed walk towards Sears with Jam.  Sylvia followed with Denny.  Fred and Jam were really going and made it to the doors without any problems.  They made it outside and Jam took the opportunity to water some more plants.  I pointed out a spot that was wider than the small median where they currently were and it was mostly mulch and a couple of flowers, so this would be a different type of ground on which to relieve himself.

Jam and Fred and I walked over to it and Jam hopped up the curve and started to twirl.  It seemed a bit odd to me, that a dog who is normally really concerned about things "being right snakey" would just hop up on some strange median without even looking at it.  But he did.  He didn't look or smell or even take into consideration that there might be little flowers that he was crushing (he wasn't).

He poo'ed and then he did a crazy thing.  He did a little leap, a leap high into the air and landed by Fred. Then he stuck out his back leg, which was now the color of night and started to shake it violently.  You see, Jam had twirled and stopped to poo on top of an anthill and those ants were extremely opposed to being covered in excrement.  Or having their house stopped up with big logs of well, you get my point. So to express their displeasure they had run screaming out of their hill and raced up his paw.

"Oh my God!" This is me, not taking any photos of his paw and swiping off ants. I can't understand those photojournalists who are the only ones on the scene when someone is going to set themselves on fire and they just stand there and shoot film.  Really?  Get a blanket and stop, drop and roll that crazy nutjob!

"Do you see his leg?" This is Fred, equally discomposed and frantic knocking ants off his paw as Jam is trying to bite the little bastards as they are trying to bite him.

I went in between his toes and looked for every little ant I could find and we got them all.

Now Jam will never poo again!

Update:  Jam has pooped.  I'm so relieved.  It seems our backyard is safe now and he is perfectly willing to walk around all parts of it once again.  He is also willing to relieve himself on any and all spots in the yard.  I'm glad I am not a mind reader.  I would think a mind reader would get trapped in the tangled mess that is Jam's brain.

It's Right Snakey Out There

Fred's mother, when looking into dark, mysterious undergrowth, would say, "Looks right snakey in there."  Meaning in essence, she wasn't setting foot in that space as it was a possible snake pit.

Lately, we have begun to suspect that Jam has actually seen a snake. Or seen something that looked "right snakey" and doesn't want to step foot out in the side yard again.

At first he wouldn't step off the porch.  He would go to the edge, peer out into the distance and you could hear him say it.

"No Ma'am.  I will not step off this porch!  It is right snakey out there!"  

But gradually, after a bit, he would step off the porch and down to the side of the yard.

"No! I will not step off the stones! It looks right snakey out there!"

This attitude of course will not stand.  He must be able to walk around and go whenever and wherever we need him to go.  Wet or dry, he needs to do his business.

This morning, Fred and Jam had a small battle of wills.  Jam had determined that the edge of the deck was as far as he would go and he was unwilling to do his business at all.  This was after a full evening's sleep and breakfast, Jam was chock full of "business" so to speak.

Fred brought him inside.  After about half an hour, Fred tried again, only this time, he got the leash and tried to take him through the gate and into the front yard for some busy work.

Nothing doing.  Those orifices were closed for business.  Fred waited an hour and they went out again.

Nothing.

"It's snakey out there."  Jam hopped back onto the deck and looked longingly at the door inside.

A little later, I decided to try and walk him around the block.  We went out the gate and through the yard and over to the neighbor's yard.  It was now about 9:30 am.  Jam was bursting at the seams with poo.

We got to the tall, wet grass and Jam stepped out onto it delicately.  He stopped and stared off intently.  

"It's right snakey out there! No grass for me!" and he hopped onto the sidewalk.  Seriously?  There was no snake.  None.  Just wet grass.  I, however, had an evil plan.  On the other side of the sidewalk is more grass.  It was the neighbor's actual green, green lawn.  And there was a green lawn space between two oak trees that are bordered with oyster plants.  Jam immediately tried to jump into the oyster plants.  

I positioned myself firmly in the center of the lawn.  Equidistant from each bed.  The leash just reached the beginning of each bed, but it wouldn't allow Jam poo access to the planting beds.

Jam ran from side to side trying to contain his poo, all the while trying to figure out a way to poo on the oyster plants and not on the snakey grass.  Finally, it was too much.  The poo would not be contained and he had to let it out.  He did 5, count them 5, twirls and then a big poo.

I think I heard a sigh.

But later, when we got back out on the porch, it still seemed a bit snakey to him.

So, we will continue this desensitization plan until he is completely over this strange sensitivity to wet grass.

Or snakes.

It just might be right snakey out there. ;-)

Taco Night

We took Stephanie and Coastie out for a belated birthday dinner last night.  It was Stephanie's birthday, Coastie still has quite a ways to go until his first birthday. 8-)

Stephanie and Coastie, a yellow lab, pose by the car.  Coastie is sitting by Stephanie's left side.

 We decided to go to our favorite Mexican food restaurant, who just happens to also LOVE our puppies in training: Casa Tina's in Dunedin.

Fred and Jam are waiting for Stephanie and Coastie to join them on the sidewalk.  Jam thinks that Coastie is a wee little thing.

 Fred and Jam have been coming to Casa Tina's for lunch about once a week for months.  So, most of the servers know him.

This photo shows Coastie at the bottom of the photo and Jam at the top lying down under the table. 

The only problem with Casa Tina's is that there isn't a good place for two dogs to lie down.  The quarters are a little tight.  So there was a little bit of the "Mom, he poked his nose over the line!" funny business.  But after awhile, they settled down.  However, Jam remained just a little antsy. A funny kind of antsy.

Jam and Fred walking down the sidewalk with Stephanie and Coastie following.

Sure enough, when we got close to the end of the block, Jam started to show a poo butt.  We yanked his coat off and let him twirl and poo.  Mind you, he had gone after his dinner, so this was a double poo night.  We continued to walk and about a block down, Jam did another twirl.  Off came the coat and he tripled poo'ed.

After Mexican food, even if you are only smelling it, it is advisable to take a good, long walk.

I Never Dreamed I Would Do It Too!

There are just some things that you don't ever imagine yourself doing.  In fact, often times, you have dreams about them.  Anxiety dreams, they call them.  Where you dream you are naked in class or in a business meeting.  How will I give this presentation without my clothes?  It's a very upsetting dream and usually indicates a disturbed mind, or at least that you are disturbed about something.  I think.  Whatever.

My dreams usually involve monsters and whales and dark water. No, those are nightmares.  Usually, really strange things happen like a baby with a golden arm appears and then something else happens.  Let's just say that once, on a hike up Sabino Canyon in Tucson, AZ with some friends we were talking about dreams and I told one of mine.  One of the girls in the group looked at me a little strangely and said, "You should really see a Jungian therapist.  They would love to get a hold of you."  Somehow that sounded vaguely threatening, so I never did go find a Jungian therapist and gradually, the whales, the dark water and monsters faded away to plain old anxiety dreams of nakedness. Like everyone else has.  I like to think that my happiness in raising guide dog puppies had fostered a sense of contentment and well being that has provided a safe haven for my subconscious to go on vacation and not have to dream up such elaborate scenarios at night.  Until today.

Two years ago I told a story about Bingo doing the poo hunch in the middle of Westshore Mall and that I picked up his 50lb self and ran him out the door (which was quite a distance away! Pretty good for an middle-aged, out of shape lady!). Crisis averted.  Carolyn then shared one of her poo stories which made me laugh so hard I though I was going to shoot coffee out my nose.  I apologize Carolyn.  I sincerely apologize.  I completely understand now why you did what you did.  But I get ahead of myself...

Today, we took the Jamster to Home Depot.  As we were walking in, I thought to myself, "It's about 3:30, he had a big pee.  That's good. Is there something else I should be thinking about?" Then my pea brain went off to think about Bed, Bath and Beyond, which was our next stop.  What did I need, blah blah blah.  We went in and started walking around.  Fred had a HUGE list of things he needed.  So I said I would go look at bathroom towel racks where I took a lovely photo of Jam as he looked at  himself in the mirrors.  I also got some cute video.

Jam, lying down, in front of some mirrors in the bathroom department.  You would think this would be foreshadowing, wouldn't you?

Then we found Fred and he sent us on this wild goose chase to find shelf doodads, and we wandered up and down aisles and couldn't find them.  We met back up Fred and it is now about 4:15.  The sweet spot for Jam as far as poo goes is right after breakfast, sometimes a 10 am poo and between 4:30 and 5:30 pm. He is REGULAR.  No fooling around.  So as we start to turn down the aisle I feel a little tug on the leash.  I look down and it's the dreaded poo hunch!

CRAP (so to speak!).  Now I have two choices: Let him poo (not a choice!) or take him out (we are far from the entrance).  But, and here's the big question: Has he actually committed himself, or is he just hunched like Bingo?

Mind you all of this is going through my head in a fraction of a second as Fred is walking off down the aisle.

What do I do?  I have to check to see if he is committed.  Otherwise I can carry him. So, I

I reach behind him.

I reach behind him and I feel for poo.

Yep.  He's committed.

In a big way.

It falls into my left hand.  Oh my God.  I have poo in my hand.  My dog just pooped in my hand.  I look up and there are people in the aisle.  Did they see him poop in my hand?  This is a real life anxiety dream only I am fully clothed and holding poo!  And my dog is going to pump out some more!

I leap up.  I can't carry him with a hand full of poo, so a RUN down the aisle with poor Jam running after me like his underwear is around his ankles.  We run as fast as we can to the exit.  Mind you, Jam CANNOT POO IN COAT.  So my main goal (aside from getting poo out of hand) is to get the coat off of him and let him shoot poo out his butt in a safe place.

Right there by the exit is an orange bucket with a garbage sack.  OMG I have to get this poo out of my hand.  I stop for a micro second to throw the poo into the bucket and in that microsecond Jam has squirted out another poo WHICH I HAVE CAUGHT!  OMG.  I throw that one away as well and run Jam out the door and over to the median grassy area and yank the coat off of him.

I can hear the sigh of relief as he finishes his poo.  I can also her the laughter as one of the Home Depot customers walks out to his car.

I tell myself, I have on all my clothes.  It could have been worse.

What's in Your Diaper Bag?

All puppy raisers live in fear of having a pee-saster or poop-cident in a public place. We generally have different ways of dealing with this, mine is usually with an elevated heart rate and a fervant prayer for tile or formica flooring! We have had one puppy raiser go the unusual route of catching the poo in her hands before it hit the floor of a Bealls Department store, but most of us aren't that quick.

I, myself, have picked up a humping, about to poo, 50-pound puppy and run with him through a mall to the outside where he did then poo. No actually poo in the mall. Score one for puppy raiser! However, I was caught unaware as HRH (Her Royal Highness) Berkeley had a pee-saster in the library workroom in front of me, but like that other intrepid poo-catching puppy raiser, I reacted without thinking. If you are wondering how do you stop a peeing puppy? I'll let you in on a secret: You pick your puppy up by the booty.

So, HRH is in the middle of peeing and I leaned down and grabbed her back legs and hiked them into the air. It would be fair to say that without anthropomorphising her at all, that shock and astonishment were her most apparent facial expressions. She looked back at me and at her now airborn booty and then back at me quizzically. But, magically, she had stopped peeing (and let me tell you, this girl can PEE!). I was able to hustle her outside, let her finish peeing and then start the cleanup inside.

It has been my only inside pee-saster at school in two years. Pretty good overall. That being said, I obsessively carry a complete doggy diaper bag that should be able to deal with any emergency that presents itself. So, here's what I carry in my diaper bag. If you carry something different, please comment!

I have two diaper bags: a small one for just my purse.

This is a small bag that will fit in most purses and doesn't scream POO BAGS! It does, however, contain inside of it, as the next photo shows, poo bags, hand sanitizers, and two small shamwows and some ziploc bags.



Now, you may be asking, "Why a shamwow?" Have you seen HRH pee? Well, she did have a pee-saster in the mall during Christmas and thankfully the mall is patrolled endlessly by mall security looking for things to cleanup. As soon as a drop of her pee hit the marble floors, a small alarm went out and two janitors were dispatched to our location. Seriously! In 30 seconds of her peeing, we had a manager and janitors waiting to clean it up. I, of course, had already whipped out my purse diaper bag, which at the time was only equiped with paper towels. Four paper towels in a lake of pee were a sodden, nasty mess and I had just looked up with frantic eyes to Fred to get him to go get more paper towels when the manager said, "We've got this."

Ah, Christmas at the mall. There are some advantages. That got me thinking that paper towels suck when it comes to soaking up a pee-saster. You need something that really can soak up like 5X its weight in liquid: SHAMWOW!

I went straight to CVS. I bought the whole package, big and small. The big one is in my big diaper bag and the two smalls are in the small diaper bag. I also keep ziploc bags to put the sodden shamwows into because you can wash them and use them again.

My big bag is the blue SEGD bag and I have it filled with poo bags, a collapsible water dish, ziploc bags, the big shamwow and hand sanitizer in wipes and in a bottle. I have since been told of a puppy raiser who had a poop-cident involving runny poo on carpet (eep!), and Diane carries with her a spray bottle of stain and odor remover in her diaper bag. So I will be adding that to my diaper bag as well! (OCD I tell you!). Thank you Diane!


I like the wet ones for cleaning up after a pickup, but the bottle is nice to have if you are eating out and need to clean your hands or share with people at the table. I also learned at the walkathon that the Gulpy Pet Water Dispenser is considered to be one of the best and probably should replace my collapsible bowl. Tracey recommended the Gulpy. I'll be going out and finding one of these as well. They are nice because they won't release water until you squeeze them. No leaking!

I also carry a little first aid kit in the car at all times, just in case, but I don't keep it with the diaper bag. If you have any ideas for what to carry in the diaper bag or carry something that you find extremely useful, please comment!

Courage from Friends

Thursday morning. In Clearwater it was dark, stormy and filled with driving rain. AT 5:25 am I hurried down the stairs with two dogs who had to pee urgently. We ran to the French doors.

I had them sit and opened the doors. The sound of rain pouring off the awning filled the family room and there was a booming crack of thunder. Her Royal Highness jerked her head up to me as if to say, "How rude. Loud noises in the morning."

"Forward." Everyone piled out onto the porch. I stayed on the porch. Willow ran off into the inky darkness and HRH, with only a tiny look backwards, followed her. Then about then seconds later, a wet black seal appears at the side of the patio in the bushes (HRH soaking wet), and starts to pee.

"Good busy busy!" I say to encourage her going to the bathroom in the pouring rain. Just in the middle of her pee there is a major lightening flash. HRH stutters and I can see that she is thinking "PEE FASTER!!!" For in 2 seconds she is finished and on the porch waiting to be let in the house. Willow comes back a few seconds later.

After breakfast, HRH usually has to go again immediately (royalty doesn't put off unpleasant tasks evidently). So she goes over to the door and sits. I let her out and she steps onto the porch and stares into the dark rain and listens to the thunder with just a little shiver. She looks back at me and turns around. She has decided that poo can wait. Then Willow races through the open door and disappears into the rain and the black night. HRH looks at me. Her spine stiffens. She turns around and runs after Willow.

About ten seconds later, a black wet seal appears at the side of the porch and does a little circle to poo. In the middle of the poo a terrific clap of thunder occurs (right over our house)! "POO FASTER!!!!"

Other People's Poo

One of the things they don't mention in the guide dog puppy manual is that you have to pick up other people's dog poo. Why? Well, because MY DOG is the only dog anybody knows is on campus. So, if they find poo on campus, guess who's dog did it? My dog!

Friday at the Harry Potter film festival, I took Her Royal Highness out to poo and there was some poo waiting for us. How convenient. HRH didn't need to poo. So I got to pick up someone else's poo.

Thanks, person who doesn't pick up after your dog on a school campus. You're a peach! But I've got your back. That's why I carry around poo bags 24/7 on my lanyard. 8-)