What's that smell?

There aren’t pictures with this post. Be glad. Be very glad.

If you can’t handle blood, vomit, urine and feces, chances are you do not share your life with a dog or a small child. Dog owners and parents quickly learn how to wipe, mop, scrub, wash and deodorize after all manner of accidents without losing their own cookies in the process. This is very much an acquired skill.

Yesterday when I got home after work, it was eyewateringly apparent something was amiss. The stench wafting through the house was not the familiar scents of vanilla candles or laundry soap. Connor had had a major intestinal blowout in his crate. Diarrhea was splattered liberally from one end to the other. He’d tried to cover it up with his crate fuzzies, which only resulted in smearing it around further. There was no way to tell when it had happened but Connor had poop caked on all four paws, up and down his legs, on his belly fur and tail. Poor Connor. Poor Phoenix, who was crated next to him.

To heck with the dogs, poor ME, who was going to have to clean it up.

On the CDS (Canine Disaster Scale), this incident ranked an 8. If Connor had managed to splatter the walls or the surrounding floor, it would have been a 9. Had he managed to splatter both the walls AND the floor, it would have been a perfect 10. A 10 ranking can also be achieved by yanking houseplants out of their pots, grinding the dirt into the carpet, then squirting honey on top of it but that particular canine-induced disaster deserves a measurement system all its own - perhaps the MAD (Malinois Absolute Destruction) scale. It would be something like the Enhanced Fujita scale meteorologists use to measure tornado strength. I’ll write about that incident some day. It involves 6-month-old Phoenix, the Farmer and a crate door that was left open.

Back to the present. Connor looked miserable. Phoenix, crated next to him, was bouncing off the walls of his crate, wanting to get away from his stinky brother. I turned him loose and looked at Connor. He looked at me. I swallowed hard. There was nothing for it but to open his crate door and carry him outdoors without letting his paws ever touch the carpet. Oh joy. Now I had dog poop all over my arms and shirt and smelled as bad as he and the house did. I sighed. My mother would probably tell me this builds character. I’m pretty sure my character did not need building that badly.

I deposited Connor on the lawn. He stalked around, stiff-legged, looking at his feet and wrinkling his nose. Yeah, buddy. I feel your pain. The only way it could have been worse was if my mother-in-law had stopped by to borrow a cup of sugar. She could probably get a whiff of the house from a mile away, though, and stayed away.

An hour later, Connor had been bathed, the crate fuzzies were in the washing machine, I had on clean clothes, the fan was blasting stinky air out of the bedroom windows and I probably wasn’t going to have any appetite for a week. Life was good.

This random diarrhea is just one of Connor’s weird little health issues as he approaches his 15th birthday. He also has a grade 2 heart murmur, his kidneys aren’t working quite like they should and his liver enzymes are elevated. In spite of it all, he is every bit as vibrant as he was during his glory days. He believes firmly in recreational barking. He takes Nylabones away from Phoenix with total impunity. He is deaf as a post but gets around fairly well and still has a voracious sheltie appetite. His motto is "Grab the treat and spit out the fingers later."

The source of the intermittent diarrhea baffles both me and my vet. It is possible the cancer Connor had three years ago has returned. Many of the symptoms are the same. We could do x-rays, biopsies, ultrasounds but to what end? Connor will turn 15 on Aug. 26. I’m not going to put him through another painful surgery and months of recovery. He will live his days in peace and if he occasionally needs to be cleaned up after, well, I’m good at it.