Foundations

"Don't feed people food to the dog," said my husband. "He'll get the runs."

Beau has admonished me in this way many times. I have always thought that I am being charitable and helpful when I give my leftovers to Shane, our pound mix. He gobbles it up and wags his tail. I nod submissively to my appointed head, but then I disobey him and befriend the dog with mexican casseroles, brown rice, and apple pie.

Once, in our old house, we smelled something horrible in the middle of the night. Beau got up to check, and 45 minutes later, I staggered out of bed to find him scouring the carpet, cleaning up doggie diarrhea. At 2:45 a.m. He was not pleased with me as I had given the dog some old turkey soup earlier that evening. I hoped they would both sleep it off.

At our new house, Shane has a lovely yard to run and poop in, so I have returned to my old sinful habit of slipping him old food.

We had a Bible study potluck dinner on Friday night and I fried up three pounds of ground turkey for tacos. The turkey smelled off and so I begged Beau to run to Sam's Club to get some ground beef. As soon as my dear husband left the house, I ran out the back door with a giant wok full of hot taco-flavored turkey for my favorite pet. He ate it up and wagged his tail. Ha, I thought. Waste not, want not. Lucky dog.

Late Saturday afternoon, we had a jaunty family outing to Trader Joe's. We even went by Starbucks and a friend's home and my in-laws' house. We returned three hours later to a foul smell in the house. We had forgotten to put Shane out before we left, and that poor dog evidently had to go to the bathroom. He got sick all over my sweet daughter's carpet. Not vomit.

To my husband's credit, he was gracious with me when I put on my gloves and got a bucket and my giant Pine Sol. I really did not care if it ruined my carpet at this point. I just wanted it all gone. I scrubbed the whole carpet for about 30 minutes. I threw out four rags and five buckets of water. Then I took a really, really long shower.

The smell was not gone this morning, so after church, my kind and understanding friend let me borrow her awesome carpet cleaning machine. The window is still open, the door is still closed, and Rebecca is sleeping in our closet in her Pack N Play, but this blogger has definitely learned her lesson.