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!

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.

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!