So what is it, Murphy’s Law or something that after you clean your rugs your dogs will immediately find some poop to walk in and track through the house?  My house has a large utility porch where the dogs hang out when we’re not at home.  It has its own doggy door and a little side yard for them to poop and pee in.  I clean the side yard as infrequently as I can manage, which is about once a week.  Once I let it go a month and that was just awful.  The air throughout the backyard was tinged with the pungent smell of poo.

Last night after doing a bunch of painting, I was straightening up the utility porch and could smell dog poop.  I said something to my daughter.  She suggested that Edna had farted.  Edna’s farts are legendary.  She is a greyhound.  She was rescued.  According to the vet, racing dogs are never fed hard food so their teeth rot.  Most of Edna’s teeth were rotten when I got her and they had to be pulled.  As a result, she has very few teeth with which to masticate her kibble.  This means she swallows the kibble whole.  Even though I buy her the smallest kibble for the smallest dogs, her digestive system is not pleased with this arrangement and rebels by making her fart the smelliest, most horrendous doozies your nose ever encountered.  They literally make the insides of your nose burn.  If we had wallpaper, her farts would curl it off the walls.

Only the smell was not fart smell, it was poop smell.  It stank like one of them had laid a big one right in the middle of the room, but there was nothing there.  Perplexed, I assumed there must have been a fresh pile right outside the doggy door that I would have to remove in the morning.

Unfortunately, this was not the case.  I came in the house, sat down here at the computer, and the poop smell followed me.  We do not wear shoes in the house, so I knew I could not have poop on my shoes.  Right about then, Molly came over and begged for a pet.  The smell was overpowering.  I knew then and there that she had poopy paws.  I hustled her onto the back porch and sure enough, BOTH back paws were covered!  It was late, I was exhausted, and I was not going to be bathing dogs at 10 at night so I left her there and returned to my computer seat.  Still the smell.  Damn.  It turned out Edna had a poopy back paw too, and both of them had tracked poopy into the house.  Luckily it seems only one place on one rug got poop on it.  Most of the rest landed on the hardwood floors.  But yuck.

So now it’s the next day and neither of them are pleased at having to sleep out back and both of them are yammering to get in the house.  Molly bangs the door with her head and makes it rattle when she’s out there and I’m in here and she wants in.  She’s banging away.  I tried to wash the poop off their paws with a wash cloth but it didn’t work.  It’s all ground into the hairs between their toes and pads and yuck.  It’s going to require bathing.  Only I wasn’t planning on taking a shower until after I rode the horse today.  What is the point of showering, riding and getting all smelly, then having to shower again?  It’s a waste.  No problem, except that I can’t ride until 11:30 when the arena is available and right now it is not even 9.  This means the dogs will have to chill on the back porch until early afternoon.  They are not pleased with this arrangement.  Unfortunately they are going to have to live with it because I just don’t feel like cleaning the rugs again.  It’s a big pain and takes all day.  Maybe I can pretend to leave.  I’ll drive my car out of the driveway, park in front, sneak in the front door, and hide in here.  They’ll think I’m gone and chill out. It might work, but I doubt it.