I've already spoken of the incident that occurred during the puppy training class. That was only the beginning of the Poop Chronicles. Get yourselves comfortable, empty your bowels if necessary and prepare yourself for the tale that I'm about to tell...
Sunday afternoon we decided to take Bella to the Giant parking lot like we have in previous weeks. As we parked and prepared to exit the vehicle, Chassie says, "Of course I forgot to bring a bag, so she'll probably have an accident." We should have loaded back up and headed home. Unfortunately, we chose to proceed. Everything was going fine, Bella and I were walking up and down the sidewalk, watching the people, the cars and the carts. Then she got a little bit weird. Before I knew it, she's squatting on the concrete and she's relieving herself right there in front of Giant. At first it comes out normal and then loosens up. She freaks out and starts walking around as her stool loosely comes out. The cell phone comes out of my pocket and I'm calling Chassie immediately, hoping she's either close enough to being finished or can grab a plastic bag so I can clean up. As the phone rings, I make eye contact with one of the cart men, I shrug sheepishly. Chassie does not answer her phone, I'm trying to think of how to clean this up and I'm thinking the cart man is telling his manager and I'll be facing some type of public defecation charge. Luckily, the cart man comes outside with a roll of paper towels.
A few clumps of paper towels later, only a stain remains on the concrete and I'm booking it towards the car. Chassie returns shortly and I fill her in on the happenings. She asks for clarity on the loose part, did it puddle? Oh yeah, it puddled all right. We get her home and put her in her playpen where we can see her, almost two hours later she jumps up on the gate and signals she needs to go outside. I take her down the stairs and outside, her running the entire way. Immediately when she exits the house, she poops again. It starts out normal and again ends in a large puddle. Upon reporting this to Chassie, she decides to implement a chicken and rice diet for the evening and at least the next morning. We also give her Slippery Elm, which is an herbal supplement to help with diarrhea. After this, things seem to get back to normal- except for the fact that she will not poop. Since her early evening poop on Sunday, she went until Monday evening to poop again. Monday night's poop was half loose again.
And that's when the fun began...
I take her out Monday night around 9:20 and she pees. We go back inside and not ten minutes later, she jumps up on the gate and starts whining to go out. Again, she runs outside and it's another loose one. We go inside and twenty minutes later it's time for bed. We head back outside where she at it again, this time like a faucet. Chassie suggests I give her some more chicken, with half a pill of Slippery Elm, hoping that it will get us through the night. We were wrong.
It takes me a while to fall asleep in general and this night was no different. After about an hour and twenty minutes of laying in bed, I hear Bella barking from her crate. She doesn't bark in her crate. She may whine when we first put her in, but that only last three minutes or less. I get out of bed, get dressed and head downstairs. The smell hits me first. I open the crate, she bolts out, poopy paw prints on the carpet and the cover for the futon we use as a bed downstairs for her and Draco. She's freaking out and I have no idea how to handle the situation. I grab her leash, put it on her and take her outside. She pees outside. As I stand out there in the cold, a plan begins to formulate. I start by cleaning her off. I know I'll have to keep her away from the crate and the futon while I start the cleanup process, so I hook the leash onto the door. She's trying to get to me or the ball across the room as I grab the cover of the futon and take it to the washing machine. The carpet is only two spots, easy. The crate however takes me forty minutes as I gag my way through cleaning. My first poop cleaning experience was disgusting, vile, nasty and I never want to do it again I think to myself as I walk back upstairs.
My alarm goes off at two o'clock for the normal night shift. I hear it at two forty-five... whoops. I get dressed again and head downstairs. There's no odor as I descend the steps, for which I am thankful. I open the door of the crate, she exits, I put the leash on and we go outside. For some reason, 1) I didn't check the crate which I always do before we go outside, 2) Something is telling me there's an issue. I take her back inside, shine the flashlight into the crate and my jaw drops. There it is a puddle of brown all over the green plastic of her house. After already having a plan in place, I'm well prepared for this unfortunate incident. I cut the cleaning time in half and I'm buttoning it up after twenty minutes. I think to myself that if she poops again in the crate at six o'clock, Chassie is going to be late for work. In my infinite wisdom, I take a full pill of the Slippery Elm and feed it to her. No peanut butter, no bread, no tricks, I just held it out and she ate it like a treat. It did take two attempts, but she took it without an incident. Feeling halfway proud of thinking proactively for the morning shift, I head back up to bed.
Six o'clock rolls around too quickly. Chassie wakes up and I sleepily tell her that if Bella has pooped in her crate, let me know and I'll help. She then asks how the night shift was. In many less words than above, I explain to her what happened. Not five minutes later, the cell phone rings and I'm getting my clothes on as I'm answering the phone. We tag team the effort and we're done in no time. Chassie is pretty awesome at cleaning crates full of poop. Not the hidden talent I'm sure she wished she had, but pretty damn handy.
I head back upstairs to get as much beauty sleep as I can muster before I have to go to work. At eight fifteen, I'm showered and ready to face the crate, I mean the day. I head downstairs and I'll just let you guess what assaults my nose...
Four times in less than nine hours. Can I get a trophy? A plaque? This has to be some kind of record, right? As I take her outside, I notice that her backside is wet and my brilliant mind tells my hand to grab the hose that's outside. Never mind that it's raining or that it's probably forty degrees- this is what needs to happen, my mind is telling me. I probably traumatized the little rugrat, especially since I didn't bother to check the setting of the hose and it came out as a full stream, hard and cold. I felt bad about that. I changed the setting to shower and wet her down, then took her immediately inside to dry her off. So she's traumatized and close to frozen, probably really pissed off and I have to clean the crate still. I've got that routine down now. Once that is finished, I let her off the leash and she wants to run around and act like a puppy idiot. I let it go as I text Chassie and update the situation for her. She tells me that she's made a vet appointment for three o'clock that afternoon. As Bella starts to chew whatever is on the floor and I have to reach into her mouth every few seconds, I become a little more annoyed. The last straw was when one of those little razors clamped down on my finger. Back in the crate she went.
I text Chassie: "I can't deal with her. I'll be back at noon to clean out the crate again." Phone rings almost immediately. I tell her that my patience had run out and I needed a break. It happens to the best of us. I fully expected to return home at my lunch hour to find a crate full of poop. Somehow, Bella decided not to get back at me for the unscheduled bath or the forced crate entry. I returned home to a perfectly clean crate. We went on a walk for ten minutes and I thought that everything was going to start getting better. Then she pooped after the walk. Same consistency as the previous six times. Luckily, we're relatively slow at work so I make arrangements to stay at home with Bella until two o'clock. She did not poop again while I stayed with her. She acted normal, played fetch with me, chewed on her bone, took a nap on the futon and peed again before I left.
Chassie and Roberta took her to the vet as scheduled. He checked her temperature, stuck his finger up her butt, gave her two types of shots, saying that everything looked okay. He gave us some special food and some medication and told us to only fed her that food for the next three days. If the problem persists, we'll have to bring her back and get blood work and x-rays done. Good news, it seems, right? I'll finally stop the poop commentary? In fact, I will stop the poop commentary. Because she hasn't pooped since she's been home from the vet. In fact, she hasn't pooped since 12:17 on Tuesday afternoon. That's over 32 hours without pooping, as I write this.
And you would say, well, that's good because Dave doesn't have to clean the crate. Oh, my faithful reader, I wish. Oh, how I wish. She now can't seem to hold her bladder. It may have something to do with the medicine because it seems that after she takes her medicine there is an increase in the frequency she has to go. Chassie fed her the meds this morning with breakfast and between 6:28 and 8:20, she had peed in her crate. Then she peed outside at 8:22. I put her back in the crate at 8:28 and between then and 12:20 she had another accident in the crate. She peed twice outside, once immediately after I let her out and again after I gave her a bath (with shampoo and it wasn't forty degrees.) She was fine after that, went the whole afternoon without peeing and left a clean crate for Chassie when she returned home. (If we're keeping score, she is was ahead by the way.) Then after dinner (and meds) she has peed five times in less than four hours. We'll see how tonight goes. I really hope there's no crate cleaning in my immediate future.
As I conclude the Poop Chronicles, I would like to thank you for your time and dedication in reading this post, if you've made it this far, you truly are a follower of The Puppy Files. If you were at one time or currently considering a puppy, I don't mean to dissuade you from your interest. The advantages far outweigh the frustration and the concern I have expressed from the past few days. I apologize if anyone was offended by the language used in this post. I attempted to keep it clean, unfortunately due to the subject matter, well, that wasn't going to happen.
P.S. I will try to keep the next post shorter.
I love it! Someday Iggy I will tell of my poop chronicles. I believe all honest dog owners have held back vomit while cleaning up the crate. Good news is as you probably are aware, you get used to it!
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