LB and I are batching it this evening. Ghost took off to visit his weekend friends.
The boys spent most of the day outdoors, so when I picked them up I didn’t worry too much about LB’s excretory needs. But sometimes he gets…urges…
I have seen ample evidence that a hundred-pound dog and explosive diarrhea are not a good combination in a 200 square foot microcabin. Especially when the floor is still just OSB. LB is an enthusiastic predator, and I never know what he’s been putting in his stomach. But he’s also a really, really good boy and he will writhe in agony for hours before nature takes its course if that’s what it takes to get Daddy’s attention. His problem is that he can’t seem to be vocal about it. If I’m glued to my ‘pooter screen, as I have been this evening, he could be doing routines from Cirque de Soleil behind my back and I wouldn’t notice.
No, the most he can do is pant, which more often than not means “I think it’s time for my evening belly-rub.” But he can pant in a most determined fashion, and he did finally win my attention. And when he did he positively pointed at the door. I cabled him up and undogged the hatch, whereupon he exited rapidly and did a very great deal of business.
Well, I felt like a bad dad, so naturally I had to overcompensate. He came back in and I praised him like he’d just won the national science fair competition.
Somebody sent me a big bag of rawhide bones, which I’ve been doling out like the foulest miser. I can’t give them whole ones because Ghost always takes his out and loses it while LB crouches and savors. When there’s only one left between two dogs, there’s friction. So I’ve been sawing them in half and only giving them out on bar mitzvahs and John Browning’s birthday. But tonight I reached into the bag and presented LB with his very own, whole thing.
He sat. He quivered. He refused to move, for fear the mirage would fade. He didn’t reach for it until I very specifically held it to his muzzle, and then he snatched it and ran back to his bed. And then he just sat there with it in his mouth, staring at me with those little golden eyes in that vast head, as if deciding that before he destroyed it, he just wanted to take a moment and enjoy having it.
And then he turned to the wall and crouched, and I’m writing this to the tune of the last of it splintering in his jaws.
Great descriptive post. 🙂
I’ve got a jingle bell hanging on my door so the woofs can get my attention when I’m lost in the computer. Of course, some days it becomes quite a game (Just wanted you to open the door so I can check the weather), & then it comes down for a few hours. But I ‘spect it’s saved us any number of frustrations & clean-ups.
Lucky, lucky Bear-butt! He’s own Precious. {slaver, slaver} =0)