Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Accounting & Godot
The last 3 months or so have seen a dramatic change to home life. While we have not welcomed a baby into the house, we have taken in and been enthralled with a young creature exhibiting human baby-like behaviour and, oh yeah, walking. All young creatures in a house go through their waste process practices with quite a bit of help from the parental representatives. Human babies are relatively easy (messy, but easy) as their mobility is limited to shaking and squirming. They are incapable of any major movement until they are at least 5-6 month along. Nature was kind to the humans by not allowing ambulation of their newly born until the parents have recovered from the birth. Yes, there is all that noise in pitches not heard since Robert Plant still screeched for Led Zeppelin, but the noise came from a non-moving source. One could step away to recover one's aural capabilities and nerves.A dog offers no such respite from care; it is a digitgrade mammal, moving almost from its initial birth. As anyone knows who's raised puppies, the food and water processing timetable for these delightful creatures is based on minutes or, if not that frequent, days. A caretaker is perpetually Waiting for Poop, as the requirement for walking one's dog may occur, like, RIGHT NOW, or possibly the next day. This perpetual waiting
I see pictures of people walking their dogs and I wonder if that could be me one day. Nicely dressed, showered, hair arranged.
I doubt it. I'm lucky if I'm not mistaken for a terrorist when I go walk our dog. Sloppy t-shirt, hair issues, sleep-deprived scowl. It's not a pretty sight. Luckily, there are quite a few people in our neighborhood that have a similar problem and a similar look, so the corrective inducement of shame hasn't poked its "tsk-tsk" in our pusses. We nod at each other as we walk by. We do not congregate together like dog-owners of more mature, more in-control canines as we don't want to be mistaken as a cabal. As I schlump through our neighborhood, I stare, with envy, at the porch stoops where a cat lies, staring at my little expeditionary party while its owner, nicely dressed and coiffed for sure, lays on his/her couch eating bon-bons.
I've been assured by friends-with-Fidos that this period will pass....pass like in 8 months. They ask me if he's gone through "the numbers" and I reply that his A/P's (Accounts Poo-able and Accounts Pee-able) are duly being debited. And if they're not, I'm out there in the heat of summer, making dunning calls with all of the other humans and their pickup bags.
Is Barko the best dog ever? You bet! Is my blood pressure down? My hair growing back? My physique returning to 1970's form? My smile glistening less of sardonicism? Well, yes on some of those things. My TV-watching is down considerable; my book-reading up. All good things. But...the feeling that what little control I thought I had of my life is slowly slipping, as Barko pleads with me just one more time to play with him, is strong. Come December/January, we'll see how this dog thing settles out. There's hope he'll be full trained and be using the toilet and flushing each time (not just once in a while) after he's done his thing(s). I mean, all those bars with their separate Pointers and Setters stalls give me the courage to see his waste facility training to the end! There is a bathroom light at the end of this walking tunnel, right?
Maybe the trick is to get a second dog. Not a puppy, though. A dog with some self-control would do.
n.b.:My kwetching here is done to hide the fact that the Ever Loving Wife takes care of this "issue" 80% of the time to my measly 20%. While I moan and groan about the walking thing, she notes that she's met quite a lot of nice folks who have interesting tales to relate both of their dog and of themselves. It seems that we did not exist in our neighborhood, according to some of these folks, until we were out there scooping the poop. Shit is truly happening.
Labels: Domestic Burdens
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