Go ahead – you know you want to…
“I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy. A Yankee Doodle do or die. A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam, Poop on the 4th of July…
Let’s call it “The Incident” and here’s the preamble to it. Every year for the 4th of July weekend, our family is invited to A-Dog’s friend’s house (we’ll call it Camp 4th) about an hour away. These friends have a pool, large backyard and a house that can accommodate two other families. This past 4th weekend, besides the seven grown-ups (interpret that term loosely) and the eight kids, there were four full-grown dogs of various breeds.
This is the sixth year we have been hosted at Camp 4th. The adults all get along and look forward to seeing each other, if only for this once a year. The kids and dogs for the most part get along too and it’s usually a fun weekend filled with lots of food, laughter and fireworks.
Keyword=fireworks. As most dog owner’s know, the 4th of July is considered hazardous by your dog. It’s noisy and scary and pointless for most of us canines and we’d really like to be anywhere else but near the boom. And speaking of boom, I think you know what’s coming. For some reason, all of the dogs were roaming free inside the house during the Saturday night fireworks. It’s a backyard show, but it lasts about 20 minutes and is impressive for an individual’s home (and probably slightly illegal.) All the kids are under 10, so as soon as the show was over, the parents were shuttling them off to bed.
Something smells BAD!
OMG, there’s a pile of poop in the kid’s room
And there…
And there…
And there!
All us dogs looked freaked out and guilty, except for Roy. He’s our host’s dog and he was calm as the pool at night. We guest dogs just tried to find a safe place, out of harm’s way. There was much shouting and drama and kids screaming. I must say that two of the lady grown-ups (who else,right?) acted so quickly in clean-up doody (get it?) that there was minimal damage and odor. Blame was up for grabs, but we mostly decided that it didn’t matter. How would we determine which doggie it was anyway?
What does this teach us for next year? Well, if our host invites the people AND us dogs back to Camp 4th, there needs to be solid containment during the fireworks, in more ways than one. We should be walked first to avoid spillage, then put in a room to shield us from the noise. Hopefully by next year, we’ll all be laughing about it. I think it may take our host a bit longer…
