What the...what did you eat?

Saturday morning was a VERY early morning for us. The little one has decided that 6:00 is just as good a time as any to wake up. We strongly disagree, but evidently he's not up for a discussion. So since I was up...and since I'm tubby I thought I might as well go for a run. I decided to take Gus, my loving, faithful, gray bearded lab mutt with me since I knew he would enjoy being out and seeing the neighborhood. Here's where I must pause for a personal explanation for anyone that has never had this conversation with me so pardon the digression...

When we FIRST got Gus it was the springish summer of 2001 - the year we were to get married. We "adopted" him from a rescue way out in the country and it was like an "overflow shelter". Shortly after we adopted him we went to Amsterdam for a wedding and and put him in a kennel. We got back on a Tuesday and I drove out to pick him up. He seemed happy to see me and chose to ride home in the front seat of my new Mercedes...About 1/2 way down this two lane country road I notice him staring at me and sort of glaring. The next thing I know he's POOPING in my front seat...seriously glaring at me and pooping my front seat. I swerved off the road, flung the passenger side door open, grabbed a towel from the front seat, swiped the poop out the door and flung the towel out with it. I was super grossed out. Fast forward to home. At the time we lived in a 3 story apt bldg and on the 3rd floor. We got home and about 30 minutes in I see Gus by the patio door and he's doing it again - POOPING! I grabbed a spatula from the kitchen, scooped the poop and tossed it over the balcony into the grass. He pretty much spent the rest of the day doing that around the apartment and I followed him around using kitchen utensils to pick up the poop and toss it over. About 3 hours later Todd came home and was like "Whoa - there's like a whole drawer full of kitchen stuff in the grass out there. That is so weird"... Hahaha. I never told, but he never figured out where all of our kitchen utensils went... End of digression. All this to say that I have NO tolerance for dog poop. In fact I have NEVER walked Gus in the going on 7 years we've had him alone where I would have to pick up poop...Back to Saturday.

So, Todd tells me to take a bag and as luck would have it later - I grabbed 4. We get about 1/8 of a mile and Gus stops to poop. I sprinkled some sand on it and picked it up with one bag and dumped it into the other. The bag gave off quite a bit of warmth and the more I thought about it and visualized it the more sick I got. Pretty soon I was gagging so hard that tears were rolling down my face and I could taste bile in the back of my throat. It took about 15 minutes to get everything back down and stabalized. We kept running and I feel the leash stop again and I look back and he's doing it again. Bleh! So I picked it up and lather, rinse, repeat the gagging and spitting up. I'm thinking - that has to be it because I only have one bag left. But now I'm carrying a double load in one plastic grocery bag and running. I round the corner, find a Cap'n Crunch box that fell off the trash truck and stuffed the double load in there and ran. I'M HOME FREE! I DID IT! I PICKED UP POOP AND SURVIVED...That joy was short lived. About 1/2 a block later he stops again and I tug and he tugs back. He's freakin' pooping AGAIN! There's panic - one bag left...So as much as I wanted to leave it I KNEW I couldn't. So I tried to be efficient like Todd would do and I ended up getting poop all over the bag opening which resulted in my having to fold the bag all weird and ending up with some sort of pouch with a long handle. After the gagging subsided I decided to "hurry" home and to my dismay as I ran that warm bag of joy was bumping against my leash hand or my thigh or my hip. I tell you what - that was a wonderful first public poop experience. Since then I vow only to bike...alone.