Poop Pivots and a Paper Plug

Dog fanatics find their dogs’ toilet habits a subject of ongoing interest. You’ll find hundreds of posts about the topic on Airedale-L alone. Said habits are inextricably linked with newspapers.

Neither of my dogs can just poop when out for a walk. Alanis insists on 3 pee stops, then a poop stop, then a couple more pee squats, then a poop and finally squeezing out one last poop stop, the object being to use up to three plastic bags and stop as many times as possible.

Miró doesn’t always poop on walks. When he does need to, he walks slower and slower. We stop. He stands there as if thinking, “I know there was a reason for stopping. Now what was it? Wait, it’ll come to me. Hey, do I smell pee mail?”

Meanwhile I’m saying, “S**t or get off the pot, Miró. Let’s go. We’re out for exercise.”

He gets moving again, slows again. It’s either stop or drag him. He sniffs around. Here? No, not quite right. How about this spot? Close but no cigar. This, right here is good. He gets into his squat and starts pivoting like a compass, hind end swinging around depositing the load while his front feet dance in place. Fortunately, he requires only one plastic bag.

I use newspaper sleeves for doggie pick-up. I subscribe to the Seattle Times and the Sunday New York Times. Every person who walks her dog should subscribe to a newspaper. Newspapers not only provide breakfast table information (thereby benefitting your health by insuring that you eat breakfast), they also line parrot cages, soak up unfortunate messes, and arrive in useful plastic bags. They are instruments of visual, tactile and kinesthetic learning. Maybe I should start carrying around the Wall Street Journal; I’ll look smarter.

Miro' gets stuck

You know how you can be working at something when a faint sound gradually penetrates your consciousness? You’ve been hearing it for some time but only after many repetitions does your brain go, “Hey, that’s not a normal noise.” So it was, both last night and this morning, when a faint, thin, mouse-squeak of a whine floated into my head.


Miró was stuck again. He can whine like a car’s brakes squeaking. He pushes open the door into the guest bathroom, where it’s quiet and dark, and curls up for a nap on the thick Gabbeh rug that’s the size of a dog bed. The door swings shut. Although Miró uses his paws to push and grab more than any of my other dogs, he prefers to wait and whine until his service provider (me) comes to open the door, rather than to experiment with manipulating the door and possibly pulling it open. This is a good thing. Once he figures out how to hook his paw around a door and pull it open, the kitchen cupboards will never be safe again. It’s a nightmare I shudder to contemplate.

The question is, why does he keep going in there when he knows what will happen? Apparently the pleasure of a nap in a private room outweighs the inconvenience of waking up to find himself unable to get out.

Recycling system--the joy of shredding

Just give Miro a box and he'll take it down to a disposable size for the recycling bin.

Cardboard egg cartons used to be Darwin's all time favorite but now I save all cartons for the hens.Left to right, eggs courtesy of Edna, Punkster, Dart-Mouth Brangelina and Muffin.