See, I was going to tell a dog shit story... no I will anyway. I am a late entry, so feel free to disqualify me.
Shortly after we adopted him, we discovered Mortimer had fleas. Due to the recent administration of a heart worm pill, the vet advised us to wait a week before we started treatment for the fleas. Morty looked at me with this terribly sad expression, and he was so obviously uncomfortable with itches. There were fleas all over him, jumping around, having a party on my poor dog. Also, I wasn't particularly interested in comforting Morty, being that he was covered in fleas and not all that appealing to cuddle at that point, so he was quite depressed that the human he had recently fallen in love with didn't seem to like him any more.
The discovery of the fleas occurred two days before I was to participate in the Three Day Novel Competition (which is, needless to say, where you write a novel in three days), which I had be preparing for for months. This was hopefully not a problem, since my husband had agreed to take care of the dog while I wrote. Then the day before the competition, my husband came home sick with what we later found out was HINI, and which over the course of the weekend progressed to pneumonia. He muttered don't worry – I'll still take care of the dog. Write your novel before passing out for eight hours of fitful fevered sleep.
So I tried to write my novel. I wrote, starting right at midnight. I wrote and wrote, straight through the first night, and through the day. I was worrying about my husband (still sick, but alive) and dog (still itchy and depressed, but otherwise okay). I kept the door shut on the office and checked on them during a few planned breaks I took. I had planned to sleep that evening, so on a break, I woke my husband up and asked if he was too sick to walk the dog. He said he would be fine, and staggered out the door.
I returned to writing for a few more hours, and at midnight, after writing for 24 hours (less two 15 min and one half hour break – timed) I staggered to bed ready to sleep, and my husband also, getting much sicker, staggered to bed after having walked Morty and put him in his crate for the night.
We both lay down, and Morty started to whimper in his crate down stairs. I yelled at him to be quiet, and he would for a bit, then he would start up again. My husband would yell at him, he would stop, then he'd cry some more. Both my husband and I were delirious from our differing reasons for exhaustion, so we muttered to each other about the stupid fleas we assumed were causing him to whimper, and yelled at the dog to shut up, and this situation ran through the six hour window of sleep I afforded myself. The dog was still whimpering when my alarm clock went off at 6am, and I went back to my office, closed the door, and tried to write some more.
My husband, meanwhile, got up to give the dog a morning walk, and in my office, with a floor between us and a closed office door I heard the swearing, which I attempted to ignore until I could ignore it no longer.
Seems the dog had had explosive, liquid diarrhea all over his crate, then been left to baste in it over night. There was my flea riddled shit-covered dog, with his shitty paw prints everywhere, and his shit filled bed, sitting next to my sickly husband. They both looked terrible, and terribly in need of my care. I said as much, but my husband insisted I go back to writing, and that he would never forgive himself if his illness caused me to quite the competition.
So I tried to go back to writing, but all I could think about was my very sick husband and my very sick, flea riddled dog. I was plaguedwith guilt – for not helping my husband and for leaving the dog to baste in his own excrement as he cried and cried to us for help. I tried to ignore the sounds of my husband trying to clean up the house and dog, but it was all I could hear, all I could think about.
I was too exhausted to focus due to lack of sleep, and I simply couldn't write anymore. I was certain I needed to give up. I went downstairs, crying like a baby, to tell my husband this, but he refuse to hear it, and insisted I take a nap and get back to work.
I took my nap, and when I awoke, I read the unreadable, nihilistic crap I'd written, and knew it was over. I had not written a novel, I had no chance of saving what I had done, and I had no time to start over. I was totally at peace with this, and told my husband so. He still didn't want me to give up and was worried I'd later blame him for this due to how worried I was about his illness. I insisted this was not the case, and that I was quitting due to exhaustion, not him.
A couple days later, I mentioned I was worried that on top of adopting a dog with fleas, we may have adopted a dog with serious intestinal problems. My husband assured me there was nothing to worry about. He admitted to me that while walking the dog that night, in his sickly delirium, he failed to notice the dog eating cheese covered jalapeños until after he’d eaten several. We live down the street from a Burger King, and the “Angry Whopper” was on special.
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Topic: Pet peeeeeeves (Read 4585 times)