Cleaning up after 3 dogs

Hello Everyone,

I first sent out this email on November 28, 2012.

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In the First World War, as soldiers huddled in the trenches, surrounded by death, mud, and despair, they clung to their rifles as their only salvation. God, Country, Family, none of those things will get you out safely when all around you is chaos and lethality. As long as I have my rifle, I'm sure they thought, I'll be okay. Nothing matters so much as getting the next clip into the chamber. This is how I feel about Nature's Miracle, the enzyme-based cleaner we use to clean up after our pets' messes. It is my Spitfire in the face of a different sort of carpet bombing. There is no bodily fluid it can't handle. You may think so naming a product would be hyperbole. It is not. When your dog has diarrhea at 5 am on your bedroom carpet and the smell is bad enough to wake up the people downstairs, only to have the product remove all traces of stench by the time you go to bed again 18 hours later, miracle is an accurate moniker. Understated, even. Indeed, when you are on your knees, scraping shit out of the bedroom carpet, it is your only salvation. It is the only hope that the smell in your bedroom will ever return to sanity. You cling to that hope. What may have prompted such reverence, you might ask? A dog with the runs who happens to eat a lot. And another dog who sleeps so deeply she doesn't wake up to pee, and also happens to drink a lot. And in previous instances a cat who expressed his displeasure by peeing on the couch and who is pretty big for a cat. For those of us familiar with the smell of cat urine, it's qualified to be listed as a biological weapon. To begin, the other day, I was working away in my office on campus trying to get work done an essay for the class I'm taking. It's going slowly, but at about 5:15 pm, Anna calls in something of a mild panic (what it takes for a full on panic at this point is a threshold that is ever rising). She's late to go pick up her parents at the train station, after which she has to haul it to puppy class, and could I go home and clean up the mess one of the dogs left in the back room. She didn't have time to clean it up when she got back, and didn't need to elaborate on what kind of mess it was. I knew, instinctively. Later, there was a second mess that was left in the house when we were at soccer. And later still, there was a third mess in the back room, just before we were to head to bed. Nobody noticed that Arthur was standing by the door with a worried expression. He didn't bark or raise attention, so when he couldn't wait, the floor had to do. Additionally, in between messes 1 and 2, while I was on the bed waiting to go to soccer, again working on my essay, I had another surprise. Jane was by my side at the front of the bed, and after a bit, I noticed a hint of urine, but just thought that she needed a bath. Only later, when we got up, did it become clear that she had emptied her entire bladder on the duvet and mattress. And she's a fair-sized dog. By this point, though, a litre of urine on the bed doesn't even rate in the top 3 worst things happening in the house that night. What really sent the situation to Def Con 4 happened at 5 am, when Arthur again failed to raise the proper level of alarm, and had to go on the floor. Only he missed the hardwood this time, and for variety's sake did it on the carpet. Wow did that smell. There are a few things that can wake you from a deep sleep. A bright light, someone shaking you, loud noises. Think of all the times you've been around someone sleeping and you bumped them, made a noise or turned on a light without waking them. In those cases, you realize that you need something substantial to wake them. Have you ever been woken by a smell? Not a situation where you woke up roughly around the time you normally would and there was the smell of bacon downstairs or some such. Awoken, in the middle of the night, by a smell. There is a reason skunks can afford to be fat and lazy. Nobody messes with that. A smell bad enough to wake you from full sleep is on that level. There was absolutely nothing else to do but to scrape it out of the carpet and liberally apply the Miracle product, as we had with the mattress earlier, and prayed to whatever Catholic Saint handles this type of thing (there's got to be one). And so it was, after another full day of work, we got home, with no surprises waiting for us, and went to bed again, with the carpet and mattress and floors clean and the smell gone out of each of them. A miracle. wes

#Attemptathumour #Dogs