Whirl

That’s what puppies are. Just like toothpaste actually. Apply a little pressure anywhere along the length, and the stuff just never seems to stop coming.

So it is with our new puppy, Belle.

I don’t know how such a thing is possible but cute little Belle has established a positive rate of exchange. Call it her GDP—gross defecation product. She eats a cup and shits a pint. I’m in awe.

A week ago our life was much simpler. One half day later we were in love. Such a pretty little face, those glowing eyes, that playful smile.

Ten minutes after that we were two blocks away and cleaning up our first cute little pile of crap.

Now I’ve become accustomed to the stuff. I check my shoes every two minutes and my fingernails every thirty seconds—even at work.

Our other dog Parker, the one we thought was so immature just a week ago, is now looking like a professor emeritus. He refuses to help us with the training. Instead he plants himself on the far side of every room and looks at us as though we were idiots. His tail is wagging but his eyes are telling us: “deal with it”.

And so we do. We’ve spent a small fortune on industrial cleansing agents–the green stuff and the blue. And we’ve abandoned our back yard to iridescent flies the size of candy corns.

Today Katharine took Belle to the vet for her first exam. He declared her to be in fabulous shape. There really isn’t much to look at on a puppy except the tube. His examination took all of 5 minutes and cost us $16 per minute.

This little exam took me back to a much more expensive day in the veterinary emergency room some 3 years ago. We were pretty sure Parker had eaten a piece of glass. The vet pointed to a spot on the x-ray that appeared to be about an inch below Parker’s adam’s apple.

“See that foggy stuff” she said, “That’s stool.” “The glass could be anywhere between there and his hind end”.

Parker is a big dog. The meandering gray rope she was illustrating looked to be about 30 feet long. We watched every inch of that rope find its way into the new world (no glass).

It only took two days. That’s 15 feet per day, 456 feet per month, and 5,475 feet per year.

My dog produces over a mile of shit, every single year!

I think little Belle is about to break that record…all she needs is another twenty feet of tube.

© 2007 by Rodney Gleghorn. All rights reserved.