01/06/25

Some things are so horrible as to defy description.

One of my all-time favorite movies is "Cool Hand Luke" with Paul Newman. It's a masterwork of the cinematic craft with such things as the absolutely bar-none sexiest car washing scene ever put on celluloid, a captivating rendition of  the song "Plastic Jesus" and lines such as "What we are dealin' with heah is failure, to commun'cate..." The reason that I mention this movie is that at one point, appropos of nothing Paul Newman blurts out, "I can eat 50 eggs". A contest ensues and bets are placed as to whether he can or not. It's a great movie. Rent it if you can.

Why do I mention this??
 

Can I eat 50 eggs? no, at least not that I know of. I have never tried it, and doubt I ever will.

My dog, however, CAN eat 50 eggs.

How do I know this?...

Well, I have 15 laying hens, and keep my eggs in a small refrigerator on my porch. Yesterday I came home from work and found the refrigerator open and empty. Decimated egg cartons lay all over the sundeck, shell fragments were scattered like shrapnel from an artillery barrage.

I looked at my dogs.

"Z" is the primary dog, a huge hairy German Shepherd/Lab cross. He's big, friendly as hell, obedient and just an absolute joy to have as a dog. Unfortunately he's one of those dogs who seems to explain things by saying " Well Food Guy, it sounded like a good idea at the time"

He looked guilty and hunted. When he saw me looking horrifiedly at the wreckage he skulked off and buried himself in the deepest corner of his doghouse and pretended vanish.

Pip, my spare back-up dog, a miniature Rottweiller (Actually a Cockapoo, but owning a miniature Rottweiller sounds WAY more manly) lay in HIS doghouse looking kinda like what he was, someone whose brother had screwed up royally, and who didn't want to rat him out, but also didn't want to share the blame. He looked at me like he was grumbling "Well Food Guy, I frigging TOLD him not to do it!"

What the hell could I do at that point?  By then to make a huge fuss wouldn't have accomplished anything . I don't hit or hurt my dogs in any way. I used to with my first dog but I learned a few things about raising dogs by reading some on the subject. I can generally accomplish every bit as much discipline by acting as the Alpha dog of the pack and making noise. The evidence looked hours old, and Z knew very well that he had committed a major crime. He was very much in disgrace, and knew it. I decided to leave it at that.  I secured the door to the fridge with a rope so that it couldn't happen again and went about my evening at-home stuff.

Later that night.. at 0310 to be exact, I found out just how unfair natural justice can be.

Let me preface this by explaining something and telling a story.

Firstly:
Dogs are pack animals and den dwellers, they feel safest and most secure living in family groups, and sleeping in dens. To that end I have a large travel kennel set up in my laundry room where both of the dogs sleep together. To keep them from getting into any kind of mischief, the door is closed at night.

Secondly:
I was a guard at a maximum-security prison for awhile. One of my enduring memories of that time was working a graveyard shift (Usually the quietest shift). I was doing a range walk one night, where you walk up and down the long lines of cells checking on the nocturnal activities of the guests of the government. On the night in question one of the inmates woke up and found that his cellmate had strung himself up and was hanging a few feet away, quite dead. What I remember most of that incident was the horrible screaming wail that went up from him. He stood at the door of his cell with his face pressed tightly to the bars shouting...

"GUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRDDD!!!!! GUAAARRRRRRRRRRRRDDD!!! GUAAAAARRDFERFUCKSAKES!!!! GUAAAAAAAARRRRRDD!!!"

His wild, horrified eyes, the desperation and outraged panic showing in his face will live in my mind's eye forever.

What does this have to do with my dog eating 50 eggs, and 0310 AM yesterday morning?

Well...

At 0310, (I know, because I looked at the clock) a screaming wail went up in my laundry room. Pip, my secondary backup dog was screaming "GUAAAAAARRDDD!! FERFUCKSAKES!!!! GUAAAAARRRRDDDD!!"

I got up out of bed, my head filled with middle of the night fuzz, wondering what the hell could be going on. I stumbled into my sweat pants and opened the bedroom door.

The laundry room is situated at the other end of my house, but when I opened the bedroom door I was assaulted, attacked by a stench that could only be described as having evolved into a living thing. As a parent I can proudly say that I changed as many diapers as my wife. In the course of my work with the Fire Department I have dealt with eviscerated bodies, the spilled contents of human digestive tracts, incontinent bowels and decomposing human flesh, complete with maggots and have never, not once hurled my guts. Last night I barely made it to my bathroom before spewing everything I had eaten in the last week.

This smell was unbelievable. Trying to capture it in words is almost an insult. It transcended the olfactory sense and moved into the realm of sight, sound and feel. It was a truly life-changing experience.

Once I had finished puking I grabbed the Vicks from the medicine cabinet, I hastily shoved a fingerful up each nostril to dull the smell. Unfortunately it lowered it only to the level of a dead Humpback whale laying on a beach in Florida during a three-week heat wave...and Vicks

I staggered down the hallway, caroming off the walls, the stink getting stronger with each step, the dog's screams getting louder. Once I entered the laundry room I found a similar scene to the one I had witnessed in the prison.

There, his face pressed tightly to the bars of the door sat a horrified, indignant Pip, covered in a glutinous, sulphurous mass. There, in the back of the kennel was a feces-coated Z wishing he were dead.

The back door of the house was eight feet away, retching, cursing and trying not to breathe at all I picked up the kennel, dogs and all and carried it outside onto my back lawn.

I can only guess what the neighbours might have thought if any of them got up around 0330, for whatever reason and found their neighbour Bryant in his back yard, garden hose in hand, hosing his dogs off, hosing their kennel out, and occasionally vomiting.
 
 
 
 

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