Easily Excitable

I’m going to begin this by saying that this post is not for the weak of heart…or the weak of stomach. If you get queasy by reading about puppy mishaps or janky joints, you may want to sit this one out. 

If you’ve ever had a day where everything that could’ve gone awry did…well…do I have a story for you. 

Wednesday was that kind of day for me, only the ‘awry-ness’ was compressed into a few hours- specifically from the hours of 3:15-8:00pm. 

A tough day is often a slow burn: compressing all that into a few hours? 

It comes hard and fast. Let us begin. 

This week, the weather’s been divine. 

I’ve not done much running recently, but Wednesday, I wanted to be outside in the nice weather and decided it was the perfect time for an afterschool jog.

In hindsight, this day was proof that I should give up running in its entirety.

I decided to go on the cross country trail. Now, the high school campus is crawling with athletes after school, and my main objective is always to avoid teenagers outside of school hours. 

There were some track stars up ahead of me, so I took a little side-route that took me around the trail they were taking. 

This led me past the soccer field where the girls practice. 

I was in the zone, and I was upright…until I wasn’t. 

I hit an area of *slightly* uneven ground, and down I went.

I would say I rolled my ankle, only ‘rolling it’ seems a little weak for what I did. I absolutely demolished my ankle. 

I went toppling, and in absolute nightmarish fashion, I couldn’t get back up. 

I tried desperately, as I knew that, if the soccer kiddos saw me, I’d never live it down. 

I sat on the ground, took a minute, and then started hobbling. I knew that, if I could just make it a few yards back into the cover of the trees, I would be okay: I just needed to stay away from the view of the masses. 

Can you imagine the field day they’d have if they saw me crawling on the ground?

I finally was able to get up and limp back over to the car. Once I got my bearings, I was able to walk, rather than stagger. 

“Well,” I thought to me, “At least that’s over.” It was one of those where your knee, your chest, and your foot hurt all at once. 

But at least I was in the car, and at least I was tilted toward home, right? There, I could limp in peace. 

Or so I thought. 

As soon as I pulled up to the trailer and opened the door, I was assaulted by a horrific smell. 

My only thought? Boone is dead: he’s gotten sick and gone to glory. I don’t mean to be negative here, but I was sure that there was no way he could survive whatever illness had caused this smell. 

I don’t want y’all to worry: the dog is fine- thriving, even. 

As I walked in and got closer to the crate, the smell got stronger, and initially, from my angle, I couldn’t see his big ol’ head pop up to greet me like normal. 

As I got closer, he did stir, and he even got excited to see me. Joy. He was sitting in the biggest mess I have ever seen in my life. 

The only part of Boone’s crate that wasn’t covered in excrement was where he was laying. In this spot, his fur had mopped it all up.

He was covered, the crate was covered, the wall was covered. 

It was an absolute wreck. I can’t even find words for it. 

I could only stand in shock initially, unsure of how to even handle the situation. After about five seconds, I snapped out of it and started with the first step, which was letting the poor poop- I mean pup- out of the crate. 

The good news? 

Boone felt fine. 

The bad news? He showed just how fine he felt by running past me whilst wagging his tail andddd, as a result, slinging excrement all over the cabinets, the baseboards, the trashcan, the walls. 

To make matters worse, Boone couldn’t gain traction (wonder why) and as a result, went sliding on the laminate.. 

When he did, he put fecal paw streaks all across the floor. 

And, as a special treat, he knocked a couple walls on his way out the back door, leaving them a totally different color.

Honestly, the damage he did in 25 seconds would’ve been impressive, had it not been so disgusting. 

So, Boone and I took it to the yard. 

He was covered, soaked in his own waste. 

Again, I just had to stand and take it all in: I was at a loss for what the next point of action was. Then, my Type A kicked in, praise the Lord. I gave a call to the vet, chatted with the angels at Orchard Veterinary Clinic, and got some advice. 

They said they’d get him some medicine ready. It was about 4:00 at this point, and they close at five, so I was officially in a race against the clock. 

I put Boone into his outdoor tub and proceeded to hose him down. To get him into said tub, I had to pick him up. 

So, now? We’re both covered in waste. The stench was so strong that, after I’d bathed him, I couldn’t tell if he still stunk or if it was just me. 

Mind you that the inside hasn’t even been cleaned yet. 

I was wondering how I was even going to get inside and change, as well as begin some of the clean-up process, when all of a sudden, an unlikely angel drove into the yard. 

It was Zayden on his bicycle- the most unexpected of heroes. 

He sat with Boone while I got the indoors to a manageable spot. Boone ran around outside, and multiple times, he tried to enter the door so he could survey his interior design. 

Inside? It was a battlefield. 

The mess inside the crate was so immense that paper towels wouldn’t do. Dragging it out and hosing it down? 

Impossible. It was so bad (and I’m struggling to write this so that you all don’t get queasy over it) that spillage would have resulted on the already destroyed floor. 

Soooo, I had to use Boone’s bath towels to clean it up. 

Those towels were beyond repair, so I then had to throw them out. 

Sparing you What Remains of the gory details…

I got him to the vet, and I got his medicine. 

Trey came home from work, and he, too, got to enjoy the smell and the work of eradicating it.  

At no point did Boone ever seem too sick: if anything, again, he was ecstatic about all of the attention he was getting. 

He got to eat rice. He got to sleep in the bed (he was clean by that point, I swear). He got to take pills coated in peanut butter- pills that he spit out after licking off said peanut butter. 

All told, the total clean up took two days, what with spraying down the walls, mopping the floors, scrubbing the crate (and the pup himself),  and wiping off cabinets where we would inevitably see splatter when we’d pass them by. 

I ran so many essential oils that eucalyptus and lavender now run through my veins. 

It was quite the afternoon. 

We’ve all recovered: Boone, Trey, the singlewide, and me. 

There are no smells or remnants that we know of, and the only casualties of the afternoon were two old towels and my allotted sanity for Wednesday. 

As I mentioned earlier, there are some bad days. And then, there are some bad afternoons, where all of the mishaps are condensed into an afterschool special you never dreamed you’d be a part of. 

The bright side? It’s hard to be a baby about a rolled ankle when puppy sickness forces you to woman up. 

And it’s hard to get too sideways about the whole situation when the aforementioned puppy is so cute. 

There’s always a bright side, even if that bright side doesn’t smell too great.