Winston looking cute
There’s a For Better or Worse cartoon on my fridge. It’s from the early days of the strip, showing Elly shivering in her bathrobe in the cold as their new puppy wanders around sniffing at leaves, ignoring his mission. Finally she yells at him in frustration: “GO ALREADY!”
That scene has been repeated many times in my back yard since my boyfriend decided he couldn’t live without a dog any longer. Winston, the Cavalier King Charles spaniel, came into our lives during the cold of winter, and like all puppies, needed to go out constantly. Over a year later, it still seems he needs to go out constantly. And as the early riser, I’m the one shivering in my bathrobe yelling “GO ALREADY” as Winston sniffs the air and examines every stick and leaf for the specialness only dogs can detect. To rush him back inside often has unpleasant consequences, so we wander about while he looks for just the right branch or pile of leaves to position his posterior over. As a lifetime cat owner, it’s been a mystery to me why the training has taken so long. As I constantly point out, training a cat takes about 30 seconds. “Here’s the cat box”. “Okay, thanks”. End of lesson. We both remain warm and dry. With Winston, the failures have been seemingly endless. The signal for “I have to go out” is quite similar to “I want to eat what you’re eating” and “Play with me NOW”. Giant bottles of Pee Pee odor eliminator are a regular item in our grocery cart.
The obvious solution is to fence in the yard, and I fully plan to do so. However, I still expect to spend a good deal of time watching him sniff the air. First, in the interest of neighborhood tranquility, we will need to prevent his habit of barking frantically at every pedestrian on the side street by our yard, especially those with dogs. Second, he has a profound interest in consuming the most disgusting items he can find. He will turn up his nose at the most gourmet of dog food, exhibiting a pickiness any cat would envy. But his poor neck has suffered from being constantly tugged about on every walk – once the snuffling starts, the swallowing is not far behind, and by the time we realize what’s in his mouth it’s often too late. We have pried sticks, rocks, sharp walnut shells, deer droppings, and maggoty dead birds from his mouth. Inside he delights in stealing items, as all puppies do, and we’ve caught him with cell phones, glasses, knives, bolts, ear plugs, heating pads, and other potentially dangerous objects. The canine lack of judgment very nearly cost him his life recently. The baby gate we installed to keep him out of the basement was left open briefly, long enough for him to pay a visit to the cat box for a delightful meal of cat litter and droppings. We try to prevent this, not caring for his resultant cat poop breath. But this time his breath was the least of his problems. The litter I had begun using was Arm & Hammer Super Scoop with baking soda. It was unscented (I hate perfumed cat litter) and does a very good job of eliminating odors. It almost eliminated Winston. The baking soda reacted with his stomach acid, and his stomach inflated like a balloon. He began vomiting and trying to burp but the gas would not escape. He could barely walk due to the discomfort. About $600 later, with an overnight stay at the vet, about a dozen x-rays, much medication, and a temporary bland food diet, he seems to have mostly recovered, and his extreme thirst seems to be abating somewhat. Will he stay away from the cat box? Probably not, so we will be using the expensive recycled newspaper litter – without baking soda. And we’ll continue to try to protect him from this dangerous world we have created – that no species can adapt to quickly enough.
(This is a repost, transferred from my old blog. Original date April 3, 2009)
