My Dog's Frito Feet

My dog’s feet smell like Fritos. She’s lying beside me as I type on my laptop on the sofa, and she just changed positions. The smell of Fritos wafted into the air like some doggish incense.

My family thinks the dog’s feet smell pleasant, whereas our personal human feet are disgusting, especially when they’ve been in sweaty tennis shoes. Perhaps that’s the problem. If we did not wear synthetic footwear for hours on end, would we have pleasant smelling feet too?

This is for future pondering because we want to focus on the dog’s feet right now and ask the question, how on earth did a dog’s feet come to smell like a corn chip?

A corn chip is made of corn and salt all smashed down together, baked until it has that perfect crunch, and sealed in a bag that is impossible for humans to penetrate without a sharp object or very strong teeth. It used to be that you’d get a guy to open a jar for you, mostly so he’d feel like he had some degree of worth in this world, but now you have to find a guy to get into a bag of chips. Sometimes, if there’s no guy handy, I’ve had to tear at these bags with my teeth like some savage jackal-like creature, over and over, getting a small bit of bag each time, spitting it out and tearing some more until I excavate a hole big enough to plunge my fist through.

So the grains and salts and other things that go into a corn chip – the chemical composition as it were – and the baking which alters, or at least dehydrates the chemicals – and the packaging which protects the baked chip until the year 4010 because air doesn’t have teeth to penetrate the seal – how in the universe can THAT smell like my dog’s feet?

My dog’s feet always smell like Fritos except just after a bath, at which time she runs outside and tries to roll in anything to cover up the good smell of doggie shampoo with something more friendly to the canine nose such as a dead rodent In advanced stages of decay. Within a day, the Frito feet are back – all four of them. The rest of the dog may be foul, but those feet are pleasant.

It’s a mystery someone needs to solve, because there is something very, very sick about smelling a dog’s feet and craving Fritos with cream cheese.

If you’ve never tried it, take a normal Frito – not the big ones – and scrape it through a container of Philadelphia cream cheese. It’s quite tasty. Don’t go in too deep or the Frito will break off. BEWARE – you will go through a whole container of cream cheese pretty quick and become a big fat lard because you won’t have the willpower to stop eating them, they’re that good.

Back to the subject, which is, why does my dog have Frito feet? If you know the answer, please don’t hesitate to send it to me via a package containing Fritos. I’m running low.

A Drive to the Airport

I took my coworker and her husband to the airport this morning. I hadn’t met her husband yet, and I wanted to make a good impression. My little dog was coming with me in the car, and she often smells like a goat. The beast rolls in everything. She cannot go outside without flopping on her back and wiggling from side to side, all four legs in the air, grinding herself into some foul smelling dead something. I’ve seen her roll on a squished earthworm – any creature that has departed this world she will hunt down and have her back smeared into it in nanoseconds. She has to do it quick because I’ll see her through the window and yell at her to stop. She pretends she can’t hear me long enough to get coated in a stench, then jumps up and looks at me like, “You talkin’ to me?”

So this morning I gave her a couple of squirts of some cheap flowery smelling stuff my daughter had bought. My husband is allergic to scents so I don’t have my own perfumes.

When I squirted that dog with a fine mist of smell, she was so insulted. She took off running like I’d poured hot water on her and tried to rub it off on the walls. She nosed down into the carpet and walked along like she was trying to shovel something, pressing one side of her face and shoulder then the other into the rug in a pitiful attempt to try and scrape the scent off.

I’m not sure why a dog can’t stand to smell good. Not this one, anyway. If I let her outside after a bath, she streaks to the grass and starts rolling just to get the smell of dirt on her. She comes back in with half the back yard clinging to her long wet hair. You can’t comb it off, it’s woven in and half the time it’s sticky – why I don’t know. But as she walks through the house it drops all over the floor like autumn leaves in a windstorm. It looks like someone’s scattered brown and green confetti over every floor in the house.

There are laws of physics that state: a 10 pound, 12 inch high dog with long black hair can collect 30 times the squared surface area of its body in yard debris consisting of tiny sticks, brown grass from last week’s mowing, and those little maple helicopters. Double the formula if the place where the dog rolls is under a sappy fir tree like the ones covering our back yard.

So this morning this dog that normally smells like a goat because it’s not practical to give her a bath every five minutes - this dog smelled like a cheap tramp. When we got in the car, the whole place filled with the sweet smell of a bouquet of sickly sweet flowers. I discovered I didn’t have any gum and I hadn’t brushed my teeth for fear of being late. Then I put on some “unscented” lotion that added an acrid element to the mix.

When my passengers got in the car, the husband who I just met immediately rolled down his window, even though it was raining. The dog, loving the fresh air, jumped into the backseat to sit on his lap, coating his jeans in that perfumed goat smell that probably lingered throughout their whole 15 hour flight to Brazil.

I’m not so sure I made a good impression.

Everything Comes Out in the End

I had to go by a customer’s house to deliver some paperwork. I parked down on the street because the last time I went to this customer’s house I blocked the driveway when the Mrs. came home. I had my dog with me because she tags along everywhere – she’s a little black nine-pound mop and pretty portable.

This customer has a beautiful yard with that thick, unnatural grass that looks better than a golf course. Flowers were everywhere. The homeowners had their door open and I could hear the clanking of utensils on kitchenware – they were either eating or preparing dinner. I thought I could see the Mrs. through the giant picture window setting the formal dining room table.

I didn’t want to leave the dog in the car because she barks her fool head off, so I let her out. I figured it would be safe because I’d seen her a couple of hours earlier doing a doggie do-do and she usually only does one a day.

She jumped out of the car and ran up the driveway so that she was in the middle of the yard right in front of the picture window. She hunched over and I knew this was not going to be a wee-wee. She strained for an eternity and then dropped a Tootsie Roll right in the middle of that beautiful yard. I was SO embarrassed.

I walked all the way back to the car, got a baggie, and tromped over to the place she went so I could clean it up. Of course I couldn’t find it, so I had to pace back and forth in front of that picture window in a searching grid until I finally found it.

I scurried back to the car and placed the bagged-up turd on the street where I wouldn’t miss it, then started back up the long driveway. The dog had moved closer to the house when I saw her hunched over again. She had to go for a record-breaking third time in one day.

I turned around and went back to the car for another baggie, then made my way up the driveway to the latest atrocity on the customer’s lawn, cleaned it up, then walked all the way down the driveway again. I never knew if the homeowner was watching or not, but I was SO embarrassed.

I don’t know why a dog has to hunch over at the worst possible times. It’s uncanny how they have such amazing timing. You can be with a dog all day long, let it out several times, see it actually go, and then when you’re at a nice place the dog manages to reach deep into its own bowels and produce a calling card on the nice people’s well-groomed lawn. It’s pretty remarkable, all things considered. The only worse thing is when your dog starts mounting the leg of the elderly lady next to you and she’s too old and wobbly to shake it off so she starts flailing at it with her purse, which only causes the dog to re-double its efforts. When those dogs get determined, you can’t shake them off either. You just have to ride it out.

I delivered my papers and the homeowner pretended not to have seen me criss-crossing her yard with baggies cleaning up little piles here and there. All things taken into consideration, everything came out well in the end. Just ask my dog.

Sweet Smelling Dogs

I had to give my dog a bath today. I say the word, “bath” and she tucks her tail and heads for the farthest away place in the house. I

Today she walked ahead of me all the way to the laundry room, tail tucked, head hung low, resigned to her fate, buying time with the little parade through the house.

I know why dogs hate baths. They know they’re going to smell good afterwards and this is offensive to them. They want to live up to the name, “foul beast.” They do not want to smell like a French house of ill repute.

The first chance my dog gets after a bath, she finds something extremely stinky to roll in. She digs in deep, feet straight in the air, thrashing from side to side as if she trying to make the smell go further than skin deep. When she gets done, she jumps up and shakes, completely satisfied that she again smells like a dog.

After the bath she runs through the house and rubs her nose and side against all the furniture like some cat on speed. She’ll bend her head down and plow her face along the carpet, switching sides. She’ll get wild and want to snap at our heels or throw a ball in the air. It’s all quite entertaining, although I feel so sorry for her during the bath.

Since she’s so small, I can wash her in a deep sink I have. All wet she looks like a black ferret with long legs. Dogs have a way of looking pitiful anyway, but she looks up at you with those dark brown eyes with the little white sliver moons and it breaks your heart. “Why are you doing this to me, momma? What did I do wrong? Didn’t you tell me I was the best dog in the world? Is this the thanks I get for always greeting you excitedly, even when you’ve just gone to the bathroom?”

Oh, I have a pitiful story to tell about this dog. She’s pretty smart so we have to spell things around her. After awhile she understands the spelled words, too. There are commands I use to tell her what to do, but also to explain what’s going on. She’s pretty good at picking up tricks, too. One thing I’ve been teaching her lately is to, “stay.” She sits for a little but will usually get up and follow me around the corner as soon as I go out of sight.

I have started working full-time (which I hope doesn’t rob me of my sense of humor), and I’ve been taking her to the office with me. She loves it. People coochie-coo her all day and give her scratches, and she can’t wait to go in the morning. Yesterday I had a commitment in the morning, so I didn’t go in the office. She had been following me around all through the house, worried I’d forget to take her with me, and I finally said to her in the living room, “I’m sorry, honey, but you’re going to have to stay here this morning.” She immediately sat down, all pitiful like, because that’s how I tell her she’s not going to get to go somewhere and she understands. Brilliant dog, that one. She quit following at my heels, and I told her I was sorry and rushed off to get dressed. I got my hair dried and came back into the living room about five minutes later and saw the poor thing still sitting there, as if to say, “See, momma, I’ll be good. I did exactly what you told me to do. Please take me with you.” She’d heard that one word in there, “stay” and was being obedient.

Now you’re probably thinking that I need to see a shrink about talking to my dog, and you’re right. But she understands what I’m saying. Furthermore, she doesn’t argue, talk back, put me down, complain, or ask me for money or my car keys. There’s no one else in the house that does that.

Now I have a nice, clean, sweet-smelling dog curled up at my feet, and life is good - as long as she doesn’t start passing gas. Ugh! Her SBD’s live up to their name. Ghastly! (get it, “gas” tley). Humph – my dog thinks it’s funny – she just told me so.

A Douse of Reality

My dog was drinking a lot of water and the vet suspected an infection in her female parts so she asked me to get a urine sample. I’m carrying this Tupperware container around the backyard, stooped over following this little dog around because she’s less than a foot tall, saying, “Go potty, go potty.”

She ignored me, too busy checking out the rib bones scattered all over the backyard. It looks like a cannibal picnic ground. When my husband has ribs, he gives the bones to the dog – it cleans her teeth and makes her like him a lot more. Everyone in this family is always trying to get the dog to hang out with them, but she likes me best. I’m her momma.

Finally she squatted and I pushed the container between her legs and managed to get a few drops. We left the sample at the vet on the way to the beach, where we were going to celebrate her birthday. This has been a tradition – the dog always gets to go to the beach around her birthday. We also have cake and ice cream. We like our pets in this house.

On the way to the beach, which is about an hour and a half drive, we kept giving her lots of water because that’s what Google said to do for a bladder infection. We were almost there when I felt something warm in my lap – the same lap the dog was sitting on.

Two gallons of doggie pee gushed out of that beast and ran between my legs before I had the chance to gasp and grab a towel. Oh my gosh, I can’t tell you what an awful feeling it was. It happened in slow motion – the warm feeling, the curious response (hmmm, wonder why the dog got warm all of a sudden….?), the sensation of warm liquid betwixt my legs, the horror when I realized that the dog had peed on me.

The worst of it was that I didn’t have a change of clothes, nor did I have another driver’s seat to replace the one soaking up all that pee. I was sitting in a pee puddle, as it were.

I had to traipse up and down the streets of Seaside with a huge wet stain between my legs – I couldn’t find anything in the stores except sweatpants that said, “SEASIDE” on the ass, and I wasn’t going to spend good money on something I’d only wear once, even if people were pointing and laughing.

It took me most of the day at the beach to find replacement clothes and clean myself and the car. I wonder if I should even be writing about this. It’s pretty disgusting all things considered. The only consolation is that the dog drank so much water that it was probably mostly just water.

We stopped a whole bunch of times on the way home. The dog got tired of getting in and out of the car. Nobody else wanted her on their lap.

I learned a lesson from the whole thing. I wish I could remember it. I guess it’s just that whenever you feel like life is getting you down or things aren’t going well, just think about me getting peed on in my car and maybe that will cheer you up. The reality is that life sometimes throws pee on your crotch, but I want you to know that you’re not alone, sweetie. You’re not alone.

Doggie Barf-o-Matic

My dog goes into these cycles of throwing up constantly, and she’s in one right now. My husband was peacefully curled up on the couch watching TV when I heard him bellow, “Awg, the dog barfed on the couch.” I went in there because I’m the designated dog throw-up remover since I was the one who wanted the dog, and there was a slimy wet pile with a streak where his bare foot had carved a path like the wake of a boat. He limped off to scour the foot with bleach, and I cleaned up the 100th pile of the day.

We don’t know why she gets this way. She can go days without even burping, and then one day I wake up to the sound of her stomach. It’s a cacophony of growling like no human stomach has ever made, even the hungriest one or the one that ate chili a couple of hours ago. These noises sound like something miserable is alive in there and it’s got a microphone.

Later, she doesn’t eat her food. This is a very bad sign. She tries to bury the food with her nose. She pretends to cover it with fake dirt, and her nose keeps hitting the bowl, lifting it in the air so that it comes down with a resounding bang like hard plastic dropping on hard tile. This goes on forever. I realize she has instincts that are commanding her to bury the uneaten food lest some wild animal appear and scarf it up, but can’t she see that there is no dirt? Pretending to cover a bowl of food is not the same as actually covering it.

The reason her not eating is a bad omen is because it means that, 9 times out of 10, she’s got an upset stomach and she will be expunging all of yesterday’s food for the next several hours. She goes outside and eats grass, which I’ve heard is supposed to soothe the stomach but for her it’s like turbo emesis. FYI emesis is the Greek word for vomit. Barf is the Latin word.

When the vomit fountain starts flowing, it comes out in erratic spurts. Sometimes there’s just a spot here and there. Others, there is a pool that frogs could play in if they were so inclined. Birds could take a bath in there, and so on. For a 9-pound dog, she’s got quite a reservoir.

The carpet looks like it’s got land mines all over it. I wipe them quickly with some anti-doggie germ stuff but the evidence lingers for hours until it dries. Everyone who has come to our house has either witnessed her throwing up or has been the victim of a barf blast. My brother was over the other day and decided to rest his back by lying on the floor. He started to lay his head down but paused, looking around. “I bet there’s not one square inch of this carpet that hasn’t been covered in that dog’s throw up.”

“Yeah, and more than once,” I said. He put his head down anyway, and the dog jumped on his stomach and promptly threw up a white, slimy pile on his crotch.

“Oh my gosh, that looks just like…” I didn’t say any more because I’m making this part up and don’t know what else to say. But all the other stuff I’ve written is true, if you can believe that.

I asked my daughter, “What should I blog about?” and she said, as she dodged one of the wet piles, “Write about that dog barfing.” So I did. Hope you enjoyed it. If you ever come to my house, wear shoes and guard your crotch.