Bad, Bad Dog

"Who? Me???"

The Scene: Our house. Last night. Dave and I are enjoying a late dinner, when it occurs to me I don’t know where the dog is.

Me: Honey, where’s Rudy?

Dave: Oh, I let her out a while ago. But she’s awfully quiet. I wonder why she’s not barking to come in. She’s been out there a while…

(Opens the back door.)

Dave: What the…??? Oh…My…GODDDD! Disgusting!!!

Me: What is it, honey?

Dave: Oh holy mother of God. Bad dog! Bad dog! BAD, BAD dog!

Me: Do you need me?

I take the lack of answer to be a yes and find Dave outside by the garage muttering loudly to himself while he cleans remnants of garbage Rudy has been quietly but happily rooting in while we enjoyed our dinner in blissful ignorance.

And then I am practically knocked over by the stench coming from my otherwise adorable dog.

Me: What IS that? (gag reflex kicks in briefly) Oh wow. Whatever it is, she’s got it all over her face! Good Lord!

(An aside: This isn’t your ordinary, everyday garbage. This is garbage comprised of “compostable materials” that Dave makes me save when I cook so he can go through the 20-some steps of composting it for use in the garden. It’s a great system, except, unfortunately, this particular batch never got composted, so the egg shells, egg yolks, vegetables and other miscellaneous kitchen waste have instead, well, rotted. And this was the mother of all rot. The big daddy voodoo of all doo doo. Words cannot explain how gross this was.)

And this is exactly what my dog got into. With aplomb. She is of course at this point looking at me with smiling eyes and a wagging tail, as if to say, “Isn't it fabulous?”

Bad, bad dog.

So we round up the doggy shampoo, hose her down in the driveway and scrub off the nastiness. And yes, this would be the second time this summer I’ve been outside at odd hours washing stench off my dog.

But of course the story doesn’t end here, because we’re not sensible people, after all.

An hour later Rudy paws at me to go out again. Figuring she may have actually ingested some of the rotting garbage, I hurry to let her out. We certainly don’t want an ugly accident in the house.

And, like déjà vu, we go through the whole cycle again.

Dave: Where’s the dog?

Me: I let her out.

Dave: Did you shorten her run? We don’t want her getting back into the garbage.

Me: Wait. You left the garbage where it was? Oh crap!

(Sounds of me running to the back door, stubbing my toe on an errant dog bone lying in the path of my mad dash and then yelling about the stench being there. Again. I mean, seriously, it took her less than a minute).

Yep. As if on a loop, the scene repeats:

Me, Dave, Rudy.

Driveway.

Shampoo.

Hose.

Utter amazement at our own stupidity.