Step on up, ladies and gentlemen, you’re a VIP ticket holder to the amazing shit show! Once you’ve entered, you won’t be able to turn away from the mesmerizing tales of crap and woe that wait for you beyond. Join me one and all for my true story of the crappiest weekend on record. The magnificent shit show of all shit shows.
It was one day B.C. (Before Carr), and I had four dogs in the house. Two were my own, the other two (Mia and Lukas) belonged to friends who were each on vacation. One of the canines – I’m still not absolutely sure which one – experienced some gastrointestinal distress on a level that left me unhinged and sent family members fleeing far and wide.
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I suppose I should go back to Saturday night, pre-poop. My husband was already in bed, and he’d piled all four dogs in with him on the California King. That’s how he rolls. Then I came into the room, complaining a little bit because it didn’t look there was any room for me. But because I’m bigger than any of these dogs (the biggest is probably 20 pounds), they all moved aside when I sat down. Right into something wet. At first I tried to tell myself it was saliva, or maybe Casper (my 14 year old Westie) had urped up some water after drinking it too fast. He does that sometimes. But no. It was a puddle of piddle, an eight inch wide wet spot that had soaked through both layers of sheets and into the foam topper.
I pulled out the enzymatic pet stain spray, but there’s not a lot you can do with a foam topper. I rousted Eddie from the bed, removed the
sheets, and I slept on top of a folded up bath towel, hoping it would soak up most of the offending wet spot. That night really stunk.
I woke up the next morning and padded out into the living room while Eddie dozed away. Waiting for me was a gigantic crapfest. A nuclear explosion of fecal matter. It looked like the shit had actually hit the fan. It was splattered all over the 8×10 rug, and from one side of the living room to the other on the wood floor. A Jackson Pollock in shades of brown. I grabbed the Febreeze and started mopping up the 65 squirtlets from the wood floor, but the toxic sludge on the rug was just too much. I was so overwhelmed that I just went back to bed and pretended I hadn’t seen it.
I finally woke up Eddie an hour later, and told him to put on some dungarees, because I needed his help. While we were power washing the rug in the back yard, the elusive pooper laid down some chocolate pudding in the dining room on the zebra striped rug. At least we already had the power washer out.
We threw in a load of sheets and the towel and went to breakfast, but not before crating Lukas – the dog we were least familiar with, and therefore most suspicious of. We returned an hour later and everything seemed fine at first, until my husband went to deliver his own food baby and stepped in a sloppy mess that had been left mostly on the bath rug in the master toilet. This cleared Lukas, but it was the last straw for my spouse. He decided that making that long drive back to Oregon was more fun than power washing one more soiled rug. He skedaddled out the door and sped off while I enlisted my son’s help in flipping the foam mattress & putting on fresh sheets.
Everyone’s an artist.
While we labored, one of the dogs did some laboring of his own in the living room, leaving us a brand new Kandinsky. It was then that I noticed the anonymous dookie dropper now had an accomplice (or two). Maybe it was a sympathy turd, but there was another pile (an actual pile, a Baby Ruth) from a different, healthier dog in front of the TV. I was so distracted by all the steamers that I completely missed the yellow puddle until I stepped in it, barefoot. I just stood there for a minute and cried, “Nooooooooo!” until my son came in, silently handing me the towel I had just washed and the bottle of cleaner. Then he disappeared into the bowels of the house, leaving me to spend the rest of the afternoon on my knees with a roll of paper towels and the bottle, dry heaving. Speaking of heaving, around this time I let Lukas out of the crate. He immediately walked into the kitchen and threw up.
An hour later my husband called from Mt Shasta to tell me that his air conditioning had gone out while he was stuck in construction traffic, and it was 104 degrees. “Sounds like karma,” I muttered. “Shit happens.”
You’d think by this time I would have figured out who kept missing the cone with the chocolate soft serve. But somehow I was always in the next room when the rectal dessert was dispensed. I kept checking sphincters for dingle berries and Klingons to no avail. I was going a little batshit crazy over not being able to identify the dog who’d been flinging shit throughout the house all weekend long. I imagine its somewhat similar to the scene that went down in the White House when the anonymous New York Times Op Ed piece was published. Which one of you dogs did it? The cute little white princess? The old faithful companion? Or the sweet dog who’s been like part of the family since my husband saved her life at the dog park when she was just a puppy? They all looked innocent. But I knew one of them was full of caca, and another had pinched a couple of loaves in the most inappropriate places.
Lukas, Olive, Mia & Casper. Who Dung It?
After Lukas’ mom picked him up and I was down to three scatalogical suspects, I decided I needed to get out of the house and get a hair cut. But as I was on my way out the door, something in the hall bath caught my eye, and there – right in front of what we call the JFK toilet on the tile floor – was another intestinal sculpture from one of the healthier dogs with a firmer colon. While I was sitting in the hair salon, every time I got a notification from my home security system that there was movement in the living room, I’d carefully check the video to see if I could catch the green apple quick stepper doing his dookie dance. I must have had 6 or 7 false alarms before I finally caught a glimpse of what looked to be several more steamers decorating the living room floor. But somehow the rectal rebel managed to do his doodie without the camera capturing the culprit, only the business cards left behind.
That night I slept in the recliner. A dog at my feet on the ottoman, one in my lap, and the old one in his bed across the room. I thought for sure if someone tried to drop a deuce in the middle of the night, I’d wake up and finally see it for myself. But no. I didn’t wake up. And yes, there was one more series of squirts waiting for me in the morning. And then, just like a case of food poisoning, as fast as it came on, it was over.
So let’s recap: that’s 1 upchuck, 2 puddles of pee, 2 tootsie rolls, and 6 glorious works of splatter art in one 24 hour period. I was losing my shit. The dogs, aside from mistaking my entire house for a toilet, seemed just fine. I collected stool samples (wasn’t hard to do, they were everywhere) and took the dogs to the vet the next day. Dr. Uhler checked them both out, and pronounced them healthy. We never did figure out what was wrong. Looking back in hindsight, my money’s on the chicken jerky treats that are now in a ziplock bag in my pantry, free to a good home. Eddie goes a little overboard with the treats when he’s home, and I think Casper was swallowing the jagged chunks without even chewing, which I imagine wreaked havoc on his intestines on the way down.
I don’t know why I love a good poop story so much, but I know I’m not alone. In fact, the best dinner party I ever went to was the night 12 of us sat around a table trading unfortunate and unexpected poop stories, like the tale of the teenager training for a track meet who’s illness came on so suddenly that he had no choice but to drop trou in a suburban flowerbed. Or the toddler with a major wardrobe malfunction who left a trail of grey poupon from one end of the house to the other.
I bet you’ve got your own fantastically gross defecation stories, so lay ’em on me.
This is going to be the best comments section EVER.
While you’re typing, check out today’s Streaming Spotify ShitShow Playlist. It’s easily the shittiest bunch of songs I’ve ever put together.
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