I came to the conclusion today, while scrubbing my house from top to bottom (very Cinderella like), that I am NOT a dog person. I guess it really started this morning around 4am... or no, last night around midnight30 about a half hour after I put Junior in his crate... well actually... like 3 months ago... wait... actually... more like 6... hmmm, actually. about a year would be more accurate - you get the point.
I didn't realize I hated dogs, I thought I just hated other people's dogs - but this was before I had my own, now I actually LIKE other people's dogs over my own... Things I like about other people's dogs:
- they are not my problem
- they do not cost me money
- i don't have to deal with their shit (literally and figuratively)
- their manners and poor/good upbringing are not my fault/problem
- oh they beg? that's cute
- they go home to their owners
I have spent a lot of time dog-sitting my shipmate's dogs here, and I actually REALLY don't mind, contrary to what you are about to read in this post. Usually, a couple days with another dog around makes me hate Junior less for a little while, then he goes and does something that makes me hate him again, or I clean the house.
So where do I begin...
I stayed up extra late last night because it was the Super Bowl, and I totally didn't realize I had a group assignment due for school that I once again was forcefully made to be the Team Leader and hand in... I actually don't always mind being the Team Leader because let's face it, in a 5 week course, I do about 5 days worth of work - the due date each week. When someone else is the Team Leader I actually have to hand my work in to the team a day or so earlier and work not under pressure, and it usually takes me a full day - and a gallon of coffee, when I'm the Team Leader, I can just do my work as I compile everyone else's together and hand it in the day it's due.
Because I stayed up late, I kept June out of his crate and let him hang out around the house... when I finally was done doing my school work, I went down let him outside once more, and put him in his crate. When I went back upstairs, I decided to write Kyle a letter, while I had some fresh thoughts in my brain. I was sitting at my desk in my office and literally about a half hour after I put June in his crate I hear him crying downstairs, then letting out these pathetic little yelps, once every three minutes about. Finally I YELLED down the stairs "ENOUGH! NO! BAD! BAD DOG!" and didn't hear from him again. About three months ago he started in with this behavior, sitting in his crate and barking in the middle of the night, or anytime between midnight and 4am... it's been driving Kyle and I absolutely batshit-fucking-crazy... I mean to the point where a couple days before Kyle was leaving for bootcamp he had decided he wanted to put Junior down, which I talked him out of. He didn't want me to have to deal with these ridiculous antics.
Here's what compounds the wound (and why he went right to putting June to sleep), when we go downstairs to answer his barks (which we basically have to do because the walls are paper thin and he barks one bark every 2 minutes until he is barking as loud as he can - even if we try to ignore him we get no sleep), he will go outside, come inside and beg for water, then want to sleep upstairs on our floor. EVERY. TIME. HE. SLEEPS. ON. OUR. FLOOR. HE. SNEAKS. OUT. OF. THE. ROOM. AND. SHITS. ON. THE. GUEST. ROOM. FLOOR. I mean, like, monster pile of dog crap - he digs from the back of his intestines into his reserve shit for this pile. I can't shut the bedroom door because then the cat will scratch at it to come in or go out every 15 minutes. I CAN'T WIN. So... we wake up, and tend to his barking, then put him back in his crate. We've researched this in books, on the internet, everything... basically what it boils down to is that Junior is an asshole.
So this morning, Junior woke up at the ass-crack of dawn, as usual, I stumbled around in my half-sleep stupor, tripped over the cat (who still finds me waking up earlier than normal the most exciting thing ever), and let Junior out. I FREEZE my ass off every morning waiting for him to come back inside too, our kitchen has ZERO heat in it, actually, there's one of those ghetto foot-warmers under the sink that I'm afraid if I use will set the house on fire, and a breeze blows through it from outside letting cold air in. He came inside, begged for water, and bolted upstairs in his usual fashion. Since I didn't have to be at work today I let him sleep upstairs... not 10 minutes after we all settled back in (me, Junior, and the cat) I hear his lard ass creeping out of the room. NO. So I sat straight up and yelled "ah, ah, ah!!" and he looked up at me with guilty eyes and laid back down on my side of the bed. (which reminds me of the time he must have eaten something from outside and had the most volatile gas that burned my nostrils it woke me from a dead sleep and I had to relocate to the guest room and Kyle woke up confused about my whereabouts). About an hour or so later, I wake up to the sound of the bedroom door opening, and wouldn't you believe, lard-ass himself is making his way towards the guest room (and literally farting as he walked - one toot per step). I quietly got out of bed and yelled "JUNIOR" in the hallway to which he stopped dead in his tracks, and sat right down outside the door to the guest room. I say "DOWNSTAIRS...OUTSIDE" and he goes outside and drops a MONSTER pile of crap - ha ha... the reserve pile found it's way to the backyard.
(as I type this, the asshole himself is scratching at the floor under where the cat eats to try and find little cat food morsels that have fallen on the floor - which will bring me to a point later on...)
I go about my morning in usual fashion, except I have my cup of coffee and realize how DISGUSTING this house is. I mean, I've really let it go, the mudroom is full of mud, there's dust bunnies the size of the cat, and this blanket we got in the white elephant gift exchange at Christmas time has made little white balls all over the house - they're even in places the blanket hasn't even gone! Plus, I made food for Super Bowl festivities last night but didn't clean a single dish so the kitchen was obscene and starting to really smell. I decided today I was going to scrub ceiling to floor, dust, ceiling to floor, steam clean floors and couch, and sanitize... the house hasn't been cleaned like this in a few months and BOY did it need it. See, Kyle is really good at keeping up with laundry, straightening things up, vacuuming, and dusting things that are in plain sight, but neither of us really CLEAN - we will have a cleaning lady when we move, that's for sure.
So, while I'm cleaning, Junior has to be locked in the kitchen because he has sensitive skin and the shampoo for the couch and carpets will give him sores and cost me about $300 in vet bills, and he sat in the kitchen the entire day and whimpered... scratched at the door to be let out - then did about-faces and scratched at the door to come in (over, and over, and over again - and yes, he does facing movements). I finally get to shampooing the couch - which has to be done because Junior gets up on it and licks himself, and if you don't know about bulldog slobber - it has the consistency of wet, watered down, Elmer's glue. I pretty much gag every time I shampoo the couch because you can tell where Junior has licked himself as your cleaning because the shampooer slides over it like it just hit an oil slick. Mind you, Junior is not allowed on the couch... yeah. Also, when he shakes his head, this tar-like substance flies out from his orifices and gets onto stuff like the couch, furniture, and your face (ALWAYS hits you in the face). This does not scrub out of the couch easily and I almost always have to either cut my losses or find a plastic brush and scrub until I break a sweat. Once I wipe down all the furniture and free it of dust, I always have to back to make a second round to clean off Juniors loose parts.
I have to give Junior prednisone and an allergy pill every morning that I usually stick in a little bit of peanut butter and pop into his mouth - while I am sticking the pills in the peanut butter, he drools at least a cup of slobber onto the floor, that I ALWAYS step in. While I was cooking for the Super Bowl last night, he drooled a puddle so big and I stepped right in it and slid across the kitchen floor and almost tanked. GROSS.
Aside from being absolutely disgusting, he is not a happy dog, which is why Kyle decided he wanted to put him down. He sits like Eeyore in his crate and mopes. Even if we walk him every day, he is captain-depresso. He is also so painfully stubborn that if I need to coerce him into his crate and he doesn't want to go - he will snap at me. He has bitten both Kyle and I pretty good on numerous occasions. He almost took Kyle's thumb off around Christmas time because he was chewing an ornament and when he went to take it away Junior backed himself under the table into a position where the only option was to get bit or leave him to chew the glass... and Kyle got bit. He ALWAYS goes for your knuckles too. He bit me so hard in the thigh over the summer though I had to NOT wear shorts for a couple weeks because I didn't want people to ask me why my thigh was so bruised. We understand that his depression and unhappiness is probably somewhat to do with his medical issues and always having raging allergy problems, but we have invested SOOOO much time, energy, and money ($$thousands$$) into trying to figure out what it is that is going to stop the allergies, we've tried different diets, no harsh chemicals, etc. etc. Basically the vet just told us "he's a bulldog." bottom line. I was always taught if the dog bites, time to put him down. We obviously can't give him away...
He always roots (snorting, lumbering, pushing furniture out of the way) around looking for food pieces that have fallen on the floor, and ALWAYS tries to sneak onto the couch. I mean, you'd think by now he knows he is not allowed on the couch, but if I'm up in the office, he will pop upstairs to see what I'm doing, then go downstairs and plant his ass on the couch. When he hears me coming down the stairs (because I heard him get on the couch) he jumps off as fast as he can... always managing to lick his paws into an Elmer-glue-slop-stain beforehand though...
He also wets his bed. He's been doing this since we got him. I finally found a dog bed that was big enough for his comfort but not too big for our washing machine because for the longest time, every time he wet his bed, we would have to take it to the laundry mat, $6 to wash $6 to dry (remember, we're on Nantucket). He has nothing physically wrong with him (as far as the vet could find) that would cause him to wet his bed, and when I researched it, many bulldog owners claimed this to be normal behavior for some dogs... in fact, they went so far to buy a crib mattress with plastic covering so they didn't have to deal with the cleaning issue I have. Dog piss smells.
I cannot eat anything in my house without him staring at me, not begging, but staring from wherever he is. Begging is the one thing I do not tolerate from dogs, other peoples dogs - that's their problem, not my dog. I will punch you in the nose if you beg. Instead, Junior stares, and drools, from across the room (or house).
I cannot move furniture without Junior getting right under my feet and in the way of the moving furniture. This could be normal dog behavior but compounded by Juniors other issues makes me hate him.
Basically, by now, you should get the point. The dog smells, farts, bites, is infected, unhealthy, unhappy, and basically a burden on our lives. We cannot give him away, and I feel like it's sad to put him down... so... we wait for him to expire? I don't know anymore. On days he's 'good' I love him to death, but it's gotten to the point where he is actually taking from the table more than he's bringing to it - he's causing us stress rather than joy. I remind myself he is an animal and that they aren't really supposed to bring humans joy, we just made them that way, but also, why must we be stressed to the point of husband/wife arguments over the GD dog?! And to think that I kept this wildebeest alive from Kyle's one way drive to the Euthanasia Ave. Also, cannot live overseas because of Junior, not that that's a HUGE issue, but if we wanted to take the job in Guam, Puerto Rico, or Hawaii, we would have to leave Junior home (the flat-faced dog cannot fly and would have to spend 90 days in quarantine once we got where we were going...)... no problem!
I don't really know where I was going with this post other than venting... I spent 8 hours cleaning the house today and everything I touched had some piece of Junior on it (literally), his hair, his slobber, his tar-goop, oh I forgot to mention, because he has no tail when he does sit on the couch, he leaves a butt-hole poop stamp where his butt was. Think about that next time you sit on our couch... awesome, right?!
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