I've Been Busy...

Our local newspaper, The Log Cabin Democrat, is changing it’s online format and the new format will provide an opportunity to be more interactive with it's readers. Several days ago, the publisher printed an editorial calling for community bloggers. I am proud to say that, after reviewing my blogs, the publisher has asked me to write a food blog for the online version of the newspaper!

Now, I know it's just a local paper for a little town of nearly 60,000 people and doesn't rise to the level of the state wide newspaper or of newspapers in other parts of the country. But, I take it as compliment just the same.

Since then, I've been busy setting up my blog and yesterday I received an email from the publisher asking me to do a couple of blogs before they migrated to the new format. Yikes! And Tammy, our pastor, was coming to dinner that night!

Well, I sat down in front of the computer for a couple of hours and produced two separate blogs. Tom jumped in and cooked dinner and everything has now settled down on the home front.

Honestly, I don't know how I'm going to keep three blogs going. I'm really going to have to see how it goes and, if I need to make decisions later, then that's what I will do. Right now, though, I'll just wing it.

So, there's not much happening at home. I know I mentioned that we are no longer referring to Goldie as G-Doggie. Her new moniker is Poop-Dawg.

Why, you ask? Do you really want to know? Three guesses.

We've had Poop-Dawg for a year and three months. If you don't know the story, here's a synopsis:

Her owner called around to local veterinary offices to notify them that she was giving away the Golden Retriever she had been using as a breeder to produce Golden Doodle puppies. We contacted our vet to get the names of Golden Retriever breeders. He gave us the breeder's number. The breeder gave her to us. Only after we got her home did we discover that, in any other situation, this would have been considered a rescue. She tested positive for heartworm and endured 3 months of treatment that basically consists of injecting poison into her system. She was so dirty it took three baths (one of which was with our vet's groomer) to get her clean. Her nails were so long and curled (under the fur on her paws) that, upon closer inspection, had a tendency to bleed where the nail meets the skin because of the pressure. When we had her spayed at our local spay clinic, her organs were so full of blood that the vet had to continually tie off bleeders during the surgery and her whole underside was black and blue for two weeks afterward (a sure sign that a dog is used as a puppy mill, said the vet). Consequently, we and our vet think it is quite possible that because of the necessity to continually nourish her reproductive organs (she was pregnant every single heat), she lacked some blood flow to the brain and is a little retarded.

Any, back to the poop part. Since she's been with us, Poop-Dawg had only had one accident a couple of weeks after we got her, which I so graphically wrote about here. Since then, she comes in at night, sleeps all night long on the floor in our bedroom, goes out in the morning and does her business, and so on, and so on, and so on.

Now Poop-Dawg is kind of a weird pooper. She'll sniff around the yard, looking for a clean spot, then finding it, get in her poop position (you know, the squat) and poop a little, then she'll look around and see that there is poop near her and quickly move out of the way (of the poop she just deposited) to find a new spot and squat and poop again. It's like when she looks around at the poop, she thinks OMG! I thought this was a clean place to poop, but there's some poop. I have to find another spot! And, when she's finished moving from spot to spot, she's made a little path or a circle. It's just the weirdest thing.

In the last couple of weeks, for some strange reason, Poop-Dawg has, on two separate occasions, pooped in the house sometime during the night. Now, if you know anything about dogs, you know that they will not poop where they live, meaning where they lay or sleep. For Poop-Dawg, that means our bedroom, the living room or the den. So where else is left? The spare bedroom and the office (where I keep the door closed most of the time).

Target = spare bedroom. You know, of course it's the one with the white rugs and white floor! And, of course, it's not just a little accident. No. Both times, it appears that she performed her usual ritual...moving from spot to spot because she's discovered, OMG!, poop! until she's created a little pattern of poop everywhere, never discriminating against bare floor or rug.

Both times Tom discovered it and both times he cleaned it up. Both times I washed rugs. Thank God for the Sanitize/Deep Clean cycle on my new washer!!

We've taken to closing the doors to both rooms at night, so if she's going to poop, she's going to have to poop where she lives, then deal with it! Maybe now, she'll think twice...if she thinks about it at all.