Oh the horror!

It had been a long day already when we walked in the door and caught a wiff of the funk. It was a lovely bouquet of old onions, puke, goat cheese, and bacon. Ok, so I didn't really pick up on all those scents, but combine all those together and your sniffer is right there in the mix. It was god-awful and we couldn't figure out where it was coming from. It smelled a bit like when your disposal gets funky in the sink, but yet that was not where it eminated from. Then I pinpointed it...Kitty's crate. In case you haven't met her, she is our slightly surly, festively plump black MinPin.

She actually runs the place, but allows us to live here. She's even got us tricked into paying rent. She spends the time while we are at work in her crate which she loves. Mostly she catches up on her reading, but sometimes she just stares off into space and dreams about the next morsel of food that will come tumbling off the countertop while Al is cooking. It's a rough life. But let's get back to the smell.

I opened the gate to Kitty's crate to find a scene of horror movie porportions. As I pulled a bit on her blanket it only got worse. Up against the back wall of her crate was the most poop I have ever seen outside of a barn yard. It was EVERYWHERE! At some point there was a blowout! Luckily, Kitty is smart enough to keep it away from her which I assume is how it ended up against the top of the back wall. Al and I both just stared in horror for a few minutes. Fortunately (or unfortunately) this was not my first rodeo so I knew what had to be done. Between gagging uncontrollably Al had the idea to pop the top on the cage to make it easier to remove the soiled articles. In light of all the gagging I asked Al if she was still interested in having kids to which she replied "not at this point, no!" I couldn't, however, get her to put it in writing. We debated (for about 2 seconds) about what to do with the blankets before throwing them in a trash bag and immediately taking them to the trash chute. There was NO WAY we were putting these things in the washing machine. Since I knew they were bound for the trash I used them to pick up the larger pieces and wipe what I could off the walls of the crate. This was not easy. Next came the task of removing the spackle-like poop which remained. While Al took Kitty out to make sure she was indeed empty, I took the cage out to hose and wipe it down. This, like the rest of the process, was a blast. Once I was finally finished I brought it back in the house for the Al treatment. She hosed it down with Lysol and then wiped it down again before putting it all back together.

From the looks of the two of us, you'd think we had seen someone get hit by a bus. We were both a little shellshocked to come home to this, but we got it cleaned up and the smell was starting to subside.

I think we can take a couple of lessons from this:

1) Al doesn't do poop well. Not that I do either, but she was useless in the task of turd abatement.

2) Never underestimate the amount of poop a MinPin can expell.

3) Never put anything (including, but not limited to, sheets, old towels, or old blankets) in a dog crate you wouldn't mind parting with.