The Dog (sitting) Days Are Over

SO....

I emailed my boss lady last night because Luke is sick and JD couldn't miss his client meeting this morning. I told her I would be at work by 12:30. Let me just recap how my night went. OH - and I'm dog sitting this little puppy named Kent. He is adorable, and his mommy is my friend. And Amanda - my bestie that is always on our couch - is spending the night. We sort of refer to her as our adopted daughter. Our first born.

12:00... finally get to bed.I'm not really sure what the hold up was, but I didn't get to bed until this late.

1:30.... Luke gets us up. He isn't feeling well and he can't sleep.

3:00 Luke gets us up.

4:30 Luke gets us up.

5:30 Luke gets us up.

6:00 we had JUST fallen back asleep. Amanda gets us up because she needs to let Dakota out (her dog) and she doesn't know how to disarm the security system. I tell her if she is going to let Dakota out, Shep (large dopey dog) is going to hear her and she'll just have to let all the dogs out. Including Pete - even though he maintains that he is not a dog.

6:05 - Amanda STOMPS back into our bedroom to tell us that Kent has been sick ALL in his kennel - and that he is now running around our garage covered in poo.

I lay there for a minute trying to take in what this means for me....

6:07 - she comes back in to tell me that Shep has had a similar experience. Naturally, since he is my baby, I jump out of bed and the second I walk into the garage... the smell slaps me across the face... I have never smelled something so AWFUL. SO AWFUL....... so. awful.

I get Shep outside and grab a towel to go find Kent (I also make "shoes" out of Kroger bags....my feet were bare!) - I wrap him in the towel and get him outside... I bleach the floor of the garage, the living room (our little Amanda ran through the house after stepping all in Kent's mess...), I throw a rug away that was ruined in the process.... then JD and I go out to hose the dogs and their beds down.

I called the vet - by now it's 7:30.... they don't open until 8. JD, Amanda and I lay down (all in our bed... but we were so sleepy that it wasn't weird) and we sleep for 30 minutes... then I prep my car AKA load it down with towels and blankets that I will later have to burn - and then I put Kent (who still reeks!) and Shep (who is just tired and listless) in my back seat.... take them to the vet.

Kent is so dehydrated that they kept him for the day. Shep gets to go back home and get treated like a little prince.... Luke and JD are home laying around... and I'm feeling quite zombie-ish. It's now 1:00 PM.

I get a call from the vet around 5ish - I've been as productive as a sleepless girl can be at work - and I head to go get Kent.

He is currently sleeping in my laundry room... poor little guy..... I feel so bad for him. His momma is in Honduras doing the Lord's work until Saturday. I feel like the worst dog sitter EVER - even though I know I did all I could do...

Ack.

Dogs have absolutely no sense of time. That must be nice.

We have two dogs. One is small and spastic... the other is large and dopey - always in a great mood. The small spastic one is mine, the large sweet one is my husband's (.... I don't know how this happened). We also have one old (age undetermined) cranky cat of at least 8 Years. She is also mine, but likes my mister more than she likes me.

Leaving my dogs for an extended amount of time is always harder on ME than it is on them, for sure. I can leave Pete (small spastic one) at "school" for a week while we vacation go, and when I pick him up - he will lick my face and remind me how much he loves me even though for the last 168 hours he has been in that miniature-Pete-sized prison that I know he can't enjoy because he is the princess at our house. Thanks to no sense of time, he does not even calculate that while I've been getting a tan on the beach, he has been eating DRY dog food and taking two quick walks a day instead of just.... going outside whenever he wants. He cannot possibly weigh out how awful it is that I've been drinking umbrella drinks while he hasn't had any fun at all (except maybe the occasional opportunity to hump something other than a pillow).
Shep (large dopey) is the outside dog - but he doesn't hold it against us. He even witnesses how well kept Pete is and never gets cranky.

The same rules do not apply to Cranky Old Cat. Bella.

Bella is..... a complete bitch. She found me. Decided that I would be the human to feed her forever and has pretty much told me how it's going to be since that Fall of 2005 when she ran under my bed and declared my territory as hers. This cat, although she has her moments, runs our house. When she is hungry, she politely TRIPS me to let me know (even if she has food in her bowl, sometimes she just likes the act of being fed. I'm not kidding). She finds my clean piles of laundry and makes nasty Bella hair wads in them. Since I don't do laundry until I absolutely have to, this is a big annoyance. And if we DARE go out of town to enjoy ourselves away from the house, she will pull her hair out, knock things off of shelves, vomit in strategic locations so that we will step in it and do all except what cats just do not do, which is defecate on the floor. They are above that.

However, Bella is sweet sometimes. When she knows she may get a Bella-treat.... yeah, she is only nice if she wants something. She is like a perpetual teenage girl. On her period. All. The. Time.

Naturally, Bella is beautiful. Striking green eyes and a gorgeous coat. She even looks kind of sweet.

She isn't.

She is staring at me now. I'm definitely about to get tripped just because she wants me to look at her full food bowl.

So, back to my point: dogs don't have a sense of time. I hope it's okay that I'm jealous. Bella obviously has a sense of time, and chooses to hold it against me as often as she possibly can. I caught myself thinking about this today at work... I've been out for a few days ill - and today was my first full day back. It was HARD to be at work all day. I was SO sure that an hour had gone by and it had only been 8 minutes.... terrible, terrible, TERRIBLE to be a clock watcher at work (which typically, I am not... and if my boss is reading this... NEVERRRR) but after being down and having the life sucked out of me by some crappy lung thing, today was long. Plus it was the end of the month - which is never easy at my job. Lots of intenseness... yes. Intenseness.

I suppose I should try to at least react to time like my small spastic dog... he is always loving. Always glad that what is happening, is happening. He is also always smelly... so.... there's that.