Two Stories

It's been a little crazy here at the Frisby home. Story #1:

Scout got spayed on Wednesday. Poor dog. When I brought her home that evening, she just moped around for awhile. Towards the end of the night, she was perking up a little and even went over to sniff at her toys. Yesterday she was doing very well and was almost back to her crazy, energetic self. But, she had a bad case of the runs. I mean, really bad. So, she was doing okay in the morning with potty breaks here and there and then I had to go to work. Usually we put her outside while we're gone, but her post surgery instructions said she should be kept in a kennel or very small room for the first day or so to limit activity. So, I decided to leave her in her kennel for the 4 or 5 hours I would be at work. She went to the bathroom before I left and then I put her in her kennel with some water and a few treats. I knew she could typically hold it for that long, but in the back of my mind I knew the diarrhea could pose a problem. I figured if she had an accident in her kennel we would just clean it out. I left for work and hoped for the best.

I arrived home just minutes after Mr. Frisby. When I walked in, it smelled a little funny. Then I saw Mr. Frisby outside with Scout with a not very pleasant look on his face and I figured it wasn't good. He came inside to get some paper towels. When he saw me, he said, "Scout went poo in her kennel. Now I'm just cleaning dried poo out of her butt fur. When I walked in and it smelled like a nursing home, I knew we were in trouble." Mr. Frisby is a smart man. I went outside to hold Scout while he cleaned off her butt. Obviously a bath would've been the easiest and quickest solution, but we can't get her incision site wet. So, we just used wet paper towels to wipe her all off. That done, I retrieved her contaminated kennel and brought it outside for a thorough cleaning. Mr. Frisby took her bedding into the bathroom to rinse it out before throwing it in the washer. When I looked in the kennel, I saw Scout's puddle of poo (puddle, not pile) in the back corner of the kennel with one of her toys right on top. Ugh. I got the toy out and soaked it in disinfectant and then proceeded to clean out her kennel. With everything cleaned up, we went inside and opened up all the windows to air the house out. I told my sister that Scout had had the equivalent of a blowout (since she's been cleaning up her fair share of those lately) and that we had spent the last half hour cleaning everything up. After that, we all settled down for a relaxing evening.

Story #2:

We decided it best not to chance Scout having an accident in the middle of the night, so I got up at 2:30 am and took her out to the bathroom. After she went and was back in her kennel I got back in bed and went back to sleep. I was awakened at 4:14 am by the sound of gushing water. Not what you want to hear in your new house in the middle of the night. I knew the sprinklers were on, but this was not the sound of a fine spray of water over the lawn. I got out of bed and walked through the house. The gushing was definitely outside, so I opened the front door to have a look and, lo and behold, there was Old Faithful in our front yard. I quickly thought, "this is bad. I don't know how to turn this off." So, I went back to the bedroom to get Mr. Frisby. Tapping him on the shoulder, I said, "do you know how to turn the sprinklers off?" He said, "yeah, I think it's in the garage." So, I said, "well, can you come do it?" "Ugh" was his reply as he got out of bed. As we headed down the hall, I explained to him the problem. He turned off the sprinklers and then we opened the front door. Even in the dark, we could see that everything was wet. Another project to add to our list. We headed back to bed.

As I lay there trying to fall asleep, I thought about the geyser in our front yard and a lot of things started making sense. Like, no wonder everything on the porch is wet after the sprinklers go on. And no wonder the office window (and only the office window) is completely covered in water spots. As I thought about the water spots on the office window, I remembered that we had left that window open to air out the nursing home smell after Scout's accident. I also remembered that our computers and other technological paraphernalia were sitting directly below that window. And if that window is normally covered in water and it was now open...well, I was a little afraid to survey the damage, but I got out of bed and headed into the office. Without turning on the light, I touched my computer and felt some drops. So, I grabbed the paper towels out of the kitchen and went back into the office to clean up. When I turned on the light, I saw how much work was ahead of me. Fortunately the blinds were down (though not turned vertically), so they shielded the water pretty well. It only took me a few minutes to wipe the water off my computer and the desk (with no harm done to the computer). But, the blinds were soaked and there were puddles of water on the window sill. I went to work wiping everything off and half an hour later I got back in bed. I'm not sure Mr. Frisby even noticed I was gone. At this point, I was pretty awake, so since I couldn't go back to sleep, I pulled out my iPhone and played Angry Birds for awhile until I got sleepy. I finally went back to sleep, but it was painfully short amount of time before the alarm went off.

We've had no shortage of excitement, we added another project to our list, the blinds are clean, and Scout's kennel is super clean. I guess it's been a productive 24 hours.