poop

I've had some big changes in the past few weeks and have a few stories and adventures to share... Oh my.

To start, I moved to a nice apartment in Andover. Its a one-bedroom place with french doors that lead out onto a wrap-around porch, which leads to a yard. Billy is thrilled. I am relaxed here. Its my own place and all of my stuff is here. (The Marblehead hobbit-hole was also my own place but it always felt temporary and I didn't have *any* of my stuff.)

Anyhow, I moved in here two weeks ago because I started a job teaching high school. So far its been just orientation and meetings but tomorrow is my first day of class. I'm very excited! More on that later.

I would like to share the story of my moving day. It was a doozie.

My moving day started at 4am when Billy woke me up with his whining and crate-rattling. I got out of bed in the guest room of my parents house and took him outside where he had garden-hose style diarrhea. He must've gotten into something, maybe another bar of soap. I went back to sleep and got up at 8, letting him out again and observing more poop-spray and some straining and dribbling. Yum.

Dad and I had to leave to meet the movers in Cambridge (where my furniture had all been left in my sublet room) so Mum agreed to let Billy out again before meeting us at my new place in Andover.

The move itself went just fine. The movers were nice and efficient-- not at all drunk, lazy, and terrified of the police like the last one I hired. Nor did anyone call the cops on us this time. Great.

It got to be around 2 in the afternoon (and did I mention that this was the hottest day of the year? The air temperature and humidity level were at womb-levels). We had gotten my bed set up and unpacked a few boxes but mostly my place was a mountain of cardboard. Mum and Dad wanted to quit so we decided to go back to their house to pick up Billy and my car.

I walked into my parents' house and was met with a very strong, peculiar, putrid odor. Billy was in the foyer, in his crate. It took me a few seconds to realize that the surrounding walls, floor, and furniture had been sprayed with a fine mist of fecal matter. In the bottom of his crate, was a good-sized pile of more of this liquid fecal matter. It was also matted into his fur on his rear end where he had sat in it. Poor guy. I put him in the yard and set to work on the clean-up.

Gently wiping tiny drops of poo from painted walls, I reached that threshold where things are so bad that they are absolutely hilarious. It took a few hours to remove the poop from the walls, the closet door jams, the doors, the furniture, the hard wood floors and natural cracks therein. Mum brought me some suggested cleaning supplies then went and did something else. Dad hid out, puttering around in the basement and boat tunnel. I was cracking myself up. It was a whole new level of disgusting.

I then took Billy's crate outside where I hosed the poop off his bedding and wiped each wire of the crate, inside and out, to remove those splatters. His bedding went in the washing maching. And then it was time to remove poop from the puppy himself.

Billy is not fond of bathing and tried to run away as I hosed him down. But once I started lathering up his ass, his tail perked right up in the air and he did a little dance for me. After drying him off, we headed to the doggy ER. After a good hour or two of waiting (and witnessing a few large dead dogs on gurneys accompanied by their sobbing owners, to which Billy was oblivious), the doctor gave us some flagyl-- an intestinal anti-inflamatory and antibiotic, and sent us on our way.

I headed back to my apartment and, believing I had locked myself out, pushed the air conditioner through the window (flooding the floor in my bedroom) and crawled in on my hands and knees. The windows are old and sticky so I can't raise this particular one any higher than what is needed for the AC. So this was fun. I stood up in the puddle on the floor and suddenly noticed that the french door was wide open and if I had walked around to the side, I could've just walked in. On top of that, my keys were not even in the apartment. They were still at my parents' house.

So, finally, after retieving my keys and car, I went back to the apartment and unpacked until I passed out.

Billy was fed a special home cooked diet of rice and beef, which he loved. He didn't poop for three days but thats probably bacause he was completely empty inside. He was on his meds for a week and is back to his old self-- pooping in appropriate places. And probably hoping for another ass washing.