Most of my posts this week will be about our dog Shiner.  He’s front and center in my mind and in my chores lately.  Writing is a release, and so is laughter.  Despite the sadness and pain, there was a little humor last night.

We felt guilty for keeping Shiner outside all day.  Some of the time he stood at the door, legs shaking, eyes imploring to be let in.  So my husband decided to try the diaper again.  We used a small sized pull-up because the doggy diapers were too big for his emaciated hips.  He cut a hole  in the pull-up for  Shiner’s tail and pulled it on him.  He waddled into the living room but didn’t even try to climb up on the couch.  He just stood there, leaning against the couch, moaning and groaning as I scratched behind his ears.  And then a noxious smell told me an accident was in the making.  A quick look told me it was falling out of the pull-up, and Shiner started walking away.  I jumped up and grabbed the back of the diaper, trying to reposition it to catch everything, and I yelled “Help!” to my husband who had just come in from outside.  In his haste to walk over to help me, he stepped right in one of the piles.  As I ran to grab the wipes and rubber gloves and a trash bag to pick up the mess off the rug, somehow my hubby got Shiner to the back door…and then the dog picked that moment to shake…and shook out all the rest of his stuff right on our carpet.

But the story doesn’t end there.  As he walked outside, the diaper fell off, spilling the rest of the contents all over the mat.

And that’s not all!

I picked up stuff and scrubbed with wipes while my husband grabbed the steam cleaner from the garage.  I guess the mess was even too much for that machine to handle, because it immediately started making a strange noise — and then it started smoking!  My husband quickly turned it off before we started a fire right there in the living room.

Not only did we have pungent dog-accident smells, but we also had electrical-fire-smoke smell!  To top it all off, my daughter had three friends over to play.  She didn’t know what had taken place and told them the smell was probably just all the clorox we’d been using to clean up lately.

Ha!

So now I’m looking for a neighbor who has a steam cleaner I can borrow.  Thanks to my dog, we have lots of trash to throw away this week:

• 1 pair of men’s house shoes
• lots of messy wipes, paper towels, and rubber gloves
• 1 steam cleaner that went kaput

So now you see a day in the life!  As my mom said as I was relaying this story to her amid laughter and tears, we’ll look back on this Keystone Kop sequence and laugh until our sides ache.  My sweet Shiner….even to the end, he’s making life exciting….well, at least not dull!