Creating major traffic delays…with poo…

And so he morphed into a massive dog, full of beans, enthusiastically sticking his massive nose into everything, and always ready with a morale-boosting hug or slobbery kiss. And then we began to realise that Alfie, our wonderful little bear…had a way of getting his hapless owners into all sorts of situations…such as that priceless moment when you are standing waiting to cross the road, Alfie is sitting patiently by your side…there is a break in the traffic…you cross one lane…get to the second lane…and midway across the lane, soooo close but soooo far from the pavement, Alfie squats and starts to unleash a poo…and you think “Oh no…not here”…
…so you encourage him to carry on crossing the road…which he obediently does, albeit maintaining the waddling squat position…so we get to the other side, and I decide to wait for another break in the traffic to go back and clear up the poo…and I am facing away from the road, getting the poo rucksack off my back when I hear a car horn…I turn around to see the far lane moving steadily, but a stationery line of cars queued up on the nearest lane…I look at the first car…who is stopped in front of the poo…and I see the driver look back at me and raise his hands as if to say “I am NOT driving through that!”.
So I then turn and take a proper look at the road surface…and I don’t see the tidy lump of dog poo that I expect…oh no…what has landed in the middle of the road is an enormous, virtually luminous, orangey-green monstrosity…which isn’t confined to one splodge…oh no…he carried on shitting as I got him across the remainder of the road…so the road is now littered with huge orange splats…
…so I look back apologetically at the car driver (tempted to say “what can you do – life’s a shitter”)…and to my absolute horror/amazement, he ushers me towards the road to clear it up…so I set off back into the road, complete with paper towel, dog bags, gloves, water and Alfie…10 surreal minutes later…I have wiped, scrubbed and sluiced the Tarmac…the road is sparkling clean and I am back on the pavement with 2 bags stuffed with poo…and the – now massive – queue of cars drives slowly past…many of them irate, but a few giggling and waving (I randomly wave a bag of poo back), whilst Alfie sits patiently, wagging his tail as if to say “Mummy, what ARE you doing?”…

Honey he shrunk the house…

 

…Over the next few weeks, we neglected all other boring stuff (cleaning – yay, admin – yay, socialising – boo)…and spent time getting to know each other…I think we would class it as bonding…Alfie would probably class it as training the parents to give him treats…

…He met all our family and friends…and melted even the hardest heart…to the point that people who had previously rung up to talk to us would now ring to enquire about Alfie, and if they could come and visit…and what would he like to play with…we amassed more dog toys than is acceptable for one dog…our house was like a canine Toys R Us…we bought furniture to hold all his paraphernalia, and wondered when we had last done anything that didn’t involve Alfie…but it was fun…

…And he grew. For the love of God, he grew at a rate of knots. Sometimes, the fiancé or I would come home after a weekend away, and he would be unequivocally taller. Every week, he’d climb on the scales in the pet store, and they’d chalk up a significantly higher figure. At 4 months he hit 35kg and by 6 months he was well over 50kg…which meant that he got strong, quickly…and aside from training him to be obedient, we had to ensure we could handle him (i.e. not be dragged along in his wake)…

So we took up Crossfit, and started weightlifting on a regular basis…granted it’s not one of the more traditional reasons for taking up exercise, but it did keep us going regularly, if for no other reason than we had to pick up 10kg of dog poo every time he squatted to release a rhino-sized dump…

Our aim was to make him completely unflappable…no-one likes a nervous, unpredictable dog…So we took him everywhere…by the age of 6 months he had been in coffee shops, the post office, the gym, he’d sat through rugby matches, live outdoor concerts. walked through the noise and loud music of the fairground, been surrounded by large crowds watching all sorts of events, and even sat patiently through fireworks…and he was, by and large, completely unflappable…

…and then he came home from a walk one day, stinking of fox shit…and there was only one thing for it…The Bath.

We filled it with warm water, added doggy shampoo and put treats all around it. It was the canine version of a spa day. Pure luxury. We got him into the bathroom, and calmly lifted him into the bath…and suddenly, our unflappable hairy mammoth became very flappable…the tail went in one direction, sweeping a great arc of water across the walls and over the window…whilst Alfie went in the other direction, spinning around and taking a flying leap towards the door…sending the fiancé and I flying in the process…and so began “Operation Catch the Mutt” as he careered through the door and out into the kitchen…where he stopped momentarily…just long enough to do the most almighty shake…coating the whole kitchen in bath water and fox shit mud…before doing a slippery slidey sprint around the kitchen…trying to escape…as we came stumbling out of the bathroom…skidding all over the wet floor like RoadRunner…trying to catch up with him…

Luckily our kitchen isn’t that big…(although it turns out it’s plenty big enough when you’ve got to wash fox shit off the entire contents)…and we eventually caught up with him and we all rolled around the now-fox-shit-smelling mire that was the kitchen floor…

So (thank you Crossfit)…we marched him back into the bathroom for Round 2…all 50kg opposing force of irate St Bernard…and deposited him in the bath…and as the tactical solution to keep him in the bath seemed to be a pile-on, he was shortly followed by the fiancé and I…clothes and all……so we all slopped about (fought) in the bath for 5 minutes until we thought he was possibly one iota cleaner…after which we took pity on him and let him out…whilst we stood in the bath and surveyed the surroundings…the trashed bathroom…sopping towels floating along the floor swimming in mud and bits of fox poo…and my (relatively) beautiful kitchen…dirty water dripping from all the higher cupboards…filthy dirty dog shaped splodges on all the lower cupboards…and a river/bog running along the floor…followed by muddy footprints heading towards the lounge…and no dog to be seen…

And then, as we stood in the bath, in our sopping wet clothes, and I wiped a chunk of fox poo from the fiancé’s face…we heard from the lounge, the unmistakable sound of a large dog shaking a lot of dirty water from his body…before taking a flying leap…and landing in a soggy wet plop…on our sofa…

And then he poohed…

…So we quickly learned that what goes in, must come out…and not necessarily in recognisable form…we would put in good quality, puppy dry food, and out would come vast quantities of yellow sick/ orange poo/ other unfathomable mucusy stuff…bless him, he would put him front paws on the newspaper, think his bum was on it…and not realising how far his back end is from his front end, he would do a nice big turd on the carpet…and so our living room carpet morphed from a lovely cream colour to more of a mottled beige with an added aroma of puppy turd…it’s lucky he was cute…

…But four weeks is a long time in puppy world, and just a month later, he was house trained, had enthusiastically greeted the vet with slobbery licks as he gave him his vaccinations, and we let him loose on the world…

…and it quickly became apparent that a puppy does not travel light…there’s only so many times you can locate a poo bag from a pocket that also holds treats, wipes, keys, phone, vet details, energy bar for you (it’s knackering work), purse, tissues and a host of other necessities…more often than not I’d dig around in my pocket trying to locate a pair of latex gloves (it’s the nurse in me) and poo bag…get frustrated and empty the pocket on the floor, then dive for the poo bag, only to watch alfie pick up a tampax (which he would then chew)…much to my mortification…whilst I stepped in the poo, trying to pick up all the valuables, and then spend 10 minutes shovelling copious amounts of poo into an already toppers bag whilst he rips apart tampons and tissues. ..and sometimes, in despair, I would resort to putting poo in one bag, and all my valuables into a spare poo bag…carrying both home…scraping my shitty shoe on the pavement…and only sometimes putting the correct one in the outdoor bin and the other one on the kitchen sideboard…

…so we now have a poo rucksack. It goes everywhere that Alfie goes, so there is a ready supply of poo bags, kitchen roll, antibacterial wipes, antibacterial hand rub, latex gloves, water, water bowl and some treats…who knew picking up a poo would involve this much admin…

Will you take this dog…for better or for worse…

So this is my blog about our wonderfully characterful St Bernard pup, Alfie – the giant yeti of a dog who oozes love and affection (and slobber), who pretends he’s sleeping whilst actually cooking up acutely embarrassing situations to mortify us at every opportunity, and whose enormous tail is a wagging wall of disaster…leaving a trail of destruction in its wake as it knocks over everything and everyone he encounters…he brings joy, laughter and complete mortification in equal amounts…what more could you ask from man’s most loyal companion…

…but let’s start at the beginning…

…We were drinking a leisurely cup of coffee one Saturday when my wonderful fiancé casually dropped into conversation the prospect of us having kids in the future…for me – someone who struggles to look after myself most days – this induced borderline panic…how on earth would I possibly cope with a child?!

So we came up with a plan…we would start with a pot plant on the kitchen windowsill. If I managed to keep it alive for six months, we would graduate to several pot plants (multi-tasking)…and if that worked we would think about a dog. And if I managed to keep a dog alive…we would progress to the planning of a family of sproglets…

…Well, a few months later, I was the proud owner of three only-partially dead pot plants. Result! On to Phase 2 of the Grand Plan – The Dog.

We wanted a rescue dog…and we put in the hours, researching  and discounting dog after dog from all the local rescue centres. After seeking plenty of advice, it became apparent that the breed was important. We wanted a reasonable sized dog – one that my fiancé wouldn’t be embarrassed to take out on walks (that discounted all the mini-sized fluffballs/poodles/chiuhahas/Bichon Frise etc), and we wanted one that would run for miles on the moors (something we do regularly), and be good with children (remember the Grand Plan).

And then we saw a St Bernard. He was the most enormous bear of a dog with more hair than is acceptable on one living creature…but he was the friendliest gentle giant we had ever seen…so we went home and researched the breed…could we really manage a giant breed dog?

…Six months later, we had swapped the fiancé’s sporty red car for a sensible mobility vehicle (he was devastated), dog-proofed the house, saved every penny, and bought an inordinate amount of reinforced poo bags…and we set off to pick up our little boy…

…Several hours later, we set off back home, armed with a basinful of information, food, collar, and a very nervous ball of fluff sitting on my knee…with status updates between me and the fiancé every 30 seconds…he’s looking okay…he’s looking peaky…he’s looking very peaky…

…And five miles into the journey he chundered in projective fashion all over me, the backseat and down the window. As I watched gloopy sick sink into my clothes, and slide down the inside of the window and over the door interior, he shook his head and globules of vomit flew around the car, settling on all the upholstery that had avoided the sick so far…and then when we got to my mum’s house shortly afterwards…he chundered all over her cream living room carpet…

…what the hell had we let ourselves in for…