Canine Explosion

One of my dogs, sweet though she is, doesn't understand carpet. Or, I should say, she misunderstands it, because she appears to think that it's grass. In my last house, the floors were mostly wood with the occasional rug; that's where my little lovely grew up. My new place has more carpet, with wood floors in the area where the dogs sleep.

None of the pets, canine or feline, appears to grasp the whole "carpet as interior" concept. The dog was the first to show her lack of concern for my new space, within the first 12 hours I lived here. She obviously wasn't well, and it was not a pleasant experience. Then, a few months later, one of the cats began to pee by the front door, beside a chair I'd had for years, but had been a side-of-the-road freebie in a previous life. I took this to be a problem with the chair; I had some confirmation of that when I found evidence that the other dog had marked the area next to it. But when the chair moved, the cats kept going (so to speak). Now one of the cats lives in a kennel during working and sleeping hours.

And then there's my little girl dog.

Every now and then, she doesn't feel well. She goes through days when nothing more than semisolid leaves her. I almost always know about those days now; I didn't in the old place because the dogs spent most nice days outside. If it's not between the hours of 8-ish and 6-ish, she'll go on the patch of sod I have in the yard - and that's the only place she'll go if I don't stop her before she gets to that area. But if I don't watch every time she goes outside, there is another way to tell. During lawn-mowing season, my roommate won't pick up this type of pile with the poop-scooping equipment because it's too messy, and will mow around it. That means I have oddly shaped patches of tall grass in the middle of the grass. Not tough to see that.

If, however, she's having trouble during working hours, she'll break down a child gate or even make a break over the electric shock mat of death ("zappy mat" to me) to get to the carpet (grass) to relieve herself. I was lax, I admit. I didn't team up the zappy mat WITH the gate yesterday (she won't stand on the mat because it shocks her, so she can't break down the gate). And I knew she'd been eating potting soil (or something similar) and grass lately. I should have seen it coming. But I didn't think and I didn't act.

So, yesterday, I managed to get out of work at 5:00. That doesn't happen often. I left the office complete with plans to meet a friend for dinner early. I was going to do some sanding around a doorway later in the evening, but was going to be fortified with sushi first. I opened the door and knew. I was hopeful that it happened on the wood floor, but there was no doubt about the smell. My nose is sensitive and well-trained. It wasn't in the kitchen, and the zappy mat was in place. It wasn't in the dining room.

Oh, but was it ever present by the front door. And everywhere else within about an 6- by 12-foot space near that door. My dog had "ass-ploded" (a term someone else used in a blog recently, but I've known of the term for awhile and feel very confident that this term best describes what happened). Everywhere. I could tell where it started and where it ended. She had even peed a line through the middle. But she circled quite a bit during the ordeal. It seems that she'd been plugged up. There were probably 20 or more piles or drips. It was unbelievable. If the picture isn't clear to you, consider light beige carpet and sunlight streaming through the windows I had to open to keep from choking on the smell.

Strangely, though, I wasn't completely angry. I've been pretty grumpy the last week, thinking distasteful thoughts about all sorts of little tiny things that don't usually bother me, but this didn't piss me off. I couldn't blame the dog, though I wanted to. I couldn't even punish her. I know her habits, which come from her instincts. I know how to keep her out of the room. I saw the signs that something internally unpleasant might be coming soon (the soil and grass). Really, it was my own fault. So, even after spending 3 hours on cleaning up entirely disgusting things and trying to get stains out of my stupid beige carpet, I wasn't mad.

Is that acceptance, or am I just THAT happy not to have to go and deal with sanding and painting that doorway?