How Wet Dog Food Exposes My Weakness

No one on Team Sank-a-ray loves a trip to scenic Blake Lake like Giggs, the crabby corgi. For him the lake is never ending place of sensory delights where his actions are never restricted by fences or leashes. He loves him a boat ride, and will bark incessantly when he gets left on shore. He can enjoy the new smells and tastes, the lake washes up all sorts of interesting dead things, occasionally something so delightful to his canine sense of smell that he can’t help but find himself rolling in it like a fat lady at perfume counter. He also enjoys the freedom of a ½ acre of sprawling grass where finding the perfect spot to drop a lawn sausage is an exercise in doggy joy. Some of his favorites; just in front of the dock where all who want to take boat ride can enjoy his work, on the gravel apron in front of the garage door, 11 inches off the deck, upwind from where the humans sit for meals. Possibilities are endless. Serious stupid dog has ½ acre of lawn to shit on and yet seems to concentrate elimination to high traffic areas.

I have this notion in my head if we’re going keep dog food up at the lake it should probably be in cans. At home he gets a kibble diet, but up there it doesn’t make sense. My reasoning goes something like this, if we keep a bag of kibble at the lake, there’s a pretty good chance that it would attract vermin into the house. We used to keep a bag of kibble in the garage; we no longer do that with good reason. A reason brought home when Mrs S was reaching into the bag with the bowl to get food for the prior dog, the one she liked enough to feed, and felt a bit of unnatural movement in the bag. Well, it was natural all right, if you count class rodentia as natural. Reaching in she disturbed a mouse who I’m sure thought it had discovered the Templars treasure of mouse sustenance. She surprised it and it, surprised her back. The critter literally ran up her arm to her shoulder and jumped into space.

I didn’t know a person could scream and feint at the same time. Apparently you can. That was the last time she ever fed a dog, and nearly the last time she ever went in the garage. We almost lost her that day.

So to avoid the temptation of a bag of mouse feed sitting in a house that is empty 90% of the time I just use canned food.

This plan is now under reconsideration and we may just have to starve the dog when we are there.

Here’s the deal.

1) I cannot open a can of wet dog food with out at some point, dry heaving. It’s like my personal kryptonite.  I know it’s dog food, but whatever the combination of dead shit they put in those cans, when combined with the “gravy” that dogs love.. It’s beyond rank. The combination of olfactory and visual sensory stimuli evoke vomit and diarrhea for me, in the same magic moment. And given what I’ve seen the dog eat, both for example as he is a dog, I’m guessing the canine focus group when asked what they would love in a dog food came up with those two as their favorites.

Disclaimer, I’m an easy heaver.. Mrs S will recount with some frivolity that I have been known to heave occasionally during particularly loose stool diaper changes and any time a kid vomited. I’ve never cleaned up kid vomit because “We’re just going to wind up cleaning up twice as much if you do it.”

Oh and the time the freezer in the garage was unplugged on August 5 2010 so my son could vacuum his car, a situation not discovered until about Sept 15 when I went out there to get some of the 30lbs of frozen meat I’d left in it.. Mrs S had to clean the freezer that day because I was busy doing my impression of a college freshmen at their firs frat party, I was on my knees barfing on the front lawn. I am weak, and at the same time in awe of a woman who can fling open a coffin freezer with 3 inches of liquefied decomposing animal protein at the bottom of it and just clean the thing out. Awe. AWE I tell you, nothing phases women.

2) That canned stuff gives the dog the vapors something fierce. And it’s a lingering issue, typically about 3 days. Literally he can’t be in the house because of the malfunction in his exhaust system. Sucks the oxygen right out of the room. And when it’s in full effect, it’s like having a canine fumigation system running with no off switch. And the dog.. doesn’t even notice. Or maybe he notices and doesn’t care. Either way the humans in the family are the losers. And if he lies in one spot long enough you might just find a pile of dead bugs and birds around him as shit drops out of the sky dead thanks to his emissions.

3) With the vapors comes the occasional intestinal duress. Dog gets an upset tummy and will on occasion, have to crap in the middle of the night. This was never a problem in the past because one of the few good things about sleep apnea is you’re never in a deep enough sleep to miss the cues, namely pawing at the blanket and whining  in the middle of the night to get up and the let the dog out because he’s about to explode. Now that I have the CPAP going I’m in DEEP SLEEP and if last night was any indication, he really tried to get me up I can tell by the placement of the pile. I would have stepped right in it and talk about getting off on the wrong foot. Well, even with the CPAP I awoke to the smell of fresh turd and had the wherewithal to use my iPhone flashlight to look down to see before I stepped. Nothing like cleaning up dog shit at 4:15 am in your PJ’s. Dry heaving the whole damn time.

This whole situation I find curious. This dog can eat an entire leftover BBQ chicken, including the bones and the foil the thing was wrapped in with little more side effect that a few sparkly poops. He has eaten more than one box of crayons, again no issue other than rainbow turds. Last spring he ate a box of Decon Rat poison, and was served two shots of hydrogen peroxide as a chaser as I tried to make him puke, didn’t even phase him. But a can of wet dog food is like a trip to Mexico for him. Weird

I know the easy answer is “stop feeding him wet dog food” and I would, except it’s darned convenient, once you work past the heaving. And the intestinal duress thing doesn’t happen every time. And for some reason I’m wired in a way that when there are two outcomes in a course of action I always assume the good outcome is more likely to happen than the bad. This is why in 11 salmon fishing trips out of the Golden Gate in San Francisco I’m 1-10 when it comes to puking on the boat, the lone “good” trip being my first one. The next 10 I boarded the boat thinking that the last time I hurled was a weird exception and only after 9 bad trips did my Father finally point out to me that just maybe, not puking.. the exception.

This proves that I can learn sometimes, but for now, I’m still buying wet dog food.