I don't know. I clean a lot of baby shit, but I still have a hard time with the idea of picking up after a dog. Of course, I never minded cleaning a cat-box. Hmmm, maybe because cats and babies expect it from you. Dogs always seem to feel a little guilty for it.
I wonder why people always want to anthropomorphize dogs?
Our first baby was an amazon parrot. He would occasionally shit on my shoulder. Or down my arm. It was warm and gooey. Eventually, he potty-trained me by biting my earlobe to inform me it was time to move him so he could poop. Smart bird.
It did nothing to prepare me, though, for the pasty nastiness that came once Ronen started eating solids.
A to the men. I remember the first time I got my kid's shit on my finger...ahh, those were such innocent days...
I love this post.
if you control the input, you control the output. if you feed your puppy once a day, he (should) poo once a day (approximately 30 minutes after eating if he is not confined).
If he's only eating at certain times but pooing all day long you might want to get him checked for worms.
I think people anthropomorphize dogs, because they do the same to us. They seem absolutely convinced that we are in fact dogs and part of their pack. It's hard not to adopt something with that kind of world view.
Yes indeed. You realize how things change when you stick your finger in your spouses face and ask, "Is that poop? Do you think that's poop?"
I second the suggestion of getting him checked for worms. That's a lot of pooping.
Another things change moment: when you have entire conversations around a third party's pooping habits. We've discussed both the dog's and Maggie's, like picked up the phone to CALL EACH OTHER and discuss.
My friends used to wonder aloud at how I woud ever raise a baby, because my gross-out threshold is very low. Now? poop, snot, drool, whatever, I am unfazed--as long as its coming from the child or the dog.
I love this post. I think I must have odd friends, because I have some single friends who apparently have no one to talk about their poop with until I show up and they discover that after dogs, cats and babies, I am pretty much immune to gross poop stories. Often I will add a gem of an anecdote about pulling a mostly-still-whole-green bean out of my kids sphincter if they think I'm kidding. And for some reason, this story helps them open up and talk about shit. Literally. Maybe I should open a counseling practice? Call it therapoo?
If I were a man I'd say that when I started saying poop instead of shit I recognized it as a moment of compromised manhood. Alas, I am a woman, and can only say, I suppose, that I've left the shit of my youth behind and arrived in the nurturing, domesticated world of poop.
We have both a 15 month old (human) and a 7 week old (canine). I am very, very tired of poop/shit/feces whatever-the-hell you want to call it. Sigh.
I like to think that having a child was good practice for getting a dog.
Also, urban dog owner, keep this in mind. Apparently some people are repulsed (scroll to the second letter/response) when you carry dog poop around! Better get yourself a stack of brown paper lunch bags.
I've wanted a dog for so long that I actually was a dog walker part-time (at age 28 with full-time work) just so I could spend time with the wonderful creatures. I lived my entire life surrounded by cats (still do actually). The one thing that killed me during my dog-walking days was cleaning up the poop. I had such a hard time with it. I wonder, now that I have my own little crap maker, if I'd find it any easier to clean up after a dog. I hope so. As soon as we get a house, I'm getting my dog.
Hollis (our 10 year old mostly beagle) is a punititive pee-er and poop-er. If you kick him off the couch, well you've stepped in it. Literally. We've been waist deep in his anger issues for quite some time.
Jack and his little baby poops have been a cake walk.
Hot tip from one cheap ass dog owner to another. Get your local deli or supermarket to part with one of those jumbo roles of veggie bags that you find in the produce department. We've paid up to $5 for a role of 1000, sometimes the managers just give it to us.
The bags are great for picking up poop off the streets and compact and easy to travel with (fantastic for those 2-bag walks)....
Ick.
I don't know-
The wife and I had a dog for years before the kid.
We could still go to a movie, out to dinner, Vegas, have sex anywhere, go on vacation, etc. without having to worry about "the dog"
To me - big difference.
It's so true. I nannied for years, and now I have a dog. The poop doesn't bother me AT ALL. It's so much better coming out of a dog than out of someone else's kid.
But a dog definitely does equal a kid in the responsibility department. At least, a puppy does. You can't take your eyes off them, and you spend most of the day desperately hoping that they will soon fall asleep.
This begs the question: does Juniper request drawings of Wendell pooping?
Yes, yes. I have drawn dozens of pictures of him pooping. She loves it when he poops on our walks. It cracks her up that I pick it up. She won't stop talking about it.
Funny... just a few weeks ago I did put our dog in a crate with a bowl of kibble while Brian and I spent the evening getting wasted at the Arcade Fire show! Actually, he has free reign of the house, but still...
Don't think of it as nasty poo....just think if it as processeed dog food. So much less icky.
Having a dog was not a real preparation for having a child for me. But, once you have a child, having a dog isn't THAT much more trouble, really. Aside from the shedding issues that children don't provide.
While the concept of poo doesn't bother me anymore, the smell of the dog's still makes me gag, whereas coming from my child, I don't have that uncontrollable physical response. I didn't sustain the dog for 9 months and give birth to him though, so maybe it's more psychological. I can't clean another child's crap or vomit without gagging, either. Just my own child's.
Ultimately, I think there's definitely a time and a place for propriety, but generally speaking, making a move in life toward things bothering us less, and being open for discussion, is a good thing. As we get older, our bodies will start falling apart, we'll have various and sundry physical issues ourselves and with our spouses to deal with that are base, not attractive or romantic, and just a part of life. Anything that gets us closer to OK with dealing with it is a positive.
I've had dogs and I've got a kid, and I still think that despite the poop factor, people who call their dogs their babies tend to be what my husband would call "schmoos". It's not your kid, it's a dog. And, yeah, you can crate him and leave him without a babysitter, and he never cries to nurse during the night, etc. etc. Dogs didn't prepare me at all for a child. With my dog, I could toss him in the car (no carseat, no 18,000 items of gear) and just go wherever I wanted. With my son there was tons of prep work to even go to the grocery store.
Nothing like a little shit to humble a person. Having to pull it out of someone's butt (human or canine) gets you bonus points.
In the poop department having a baby is good practice before you get a dog, and vice versa.
But women pushing pugs in $800 strollers is still just wrong.
Nothing wrong with poop musings, but dude, you left us hanging with the Greece thing...More Please!
Dear Sweet Juniper,
I was referred by Leah to a post of yours from exactly one year ago...the Monday Morning Mix clapping songs are awesome! I've read a handful of your most recent posts and I'm already hooked--can't wait to hear the coda of the young and stupid in Greece story.
I'll take my dog's steaming--but blessedly solid--pile over breastfed baby poop any day!
I read this last night. Somewhere in my dreams, I think it was when I got out of a dentist chair, I came very close to almost stepping in the largest huge dump I have ever seen in my life. In order not to step in it, I had to raise my foot way up! I looked at my Dentist, who I presumed had made that while he was working on me, and assured him that it was no problem- I didn't get any on me! I didn't even think it was weird that it as there! I actually did spend an hour in the dentist chair yesterday.
You have a really cool dog, and a as we all know on this blog- one of the most intelligent and beautiful kids ever. If I ever get jealous and tell you that I wish had all that shit to deal with in my life- just say, "in your dreams, Dadzbo!"
If Juniper is fascinated with pooping dogs and you don't have an issue with Barbie, you should get her Barbie and Tanner Dog. Tanner "eats" little magnetic pellets and then poops them back out. Barbie picks up the poop with her magnetic pooper scooper and deposits them into a trash can, which attaches to the dog food box so the pellets just become food again. Barbie and Tanner Dog have proved endlessly entertaining for Petunia and some of her little friends, who are about a year older than Juney.
Here's a little vid of Tanner's eating and pooping in action:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5...h?
v=58r0hHgjWLs
Dutch is your dog named after Wendell Berry?
I really hope so.
I will only say that one of his poems was read at our wedding.
That Barbie/Tanner thing....
OH MY GOD LET IT GO, MATTEL!!! We have Potty Elmo, pooping Tanner doggie w/Barbie pooper scooper...
I could clean it up all day long because that was how I kept my child and yard clean and in huggable/walkable order. But MUST WE FRIGGING PLAY POO TOO!?!
We have nine cats, all strays, adopted from the pound, or dropped on our doorstep by well-meaning friends. I love my cats, but I have cleaned up some of the most disgusting messes imaginable. Puke, parasites, bacterial infections in the digestive tract, eating things that are not cat food (or any food), illnesses they caught from living outside too long or from being at the pound...our baby is due in a month and we just laugh when people tell us how bad changing diapers can be.
yeah, but dogs don't talk, so you can't stop one from shitting on your floor by saying "STOP SHITTING ON THE FLOOR!!!"
and here i was imagining it was from oliver wendell holmes...
I used this post to prove to my partner that having a child involves close proximity to poop. He didn't believe me until now.
Yeah, poop can get tiring. But I don't think Wendell has worms unless he is dragging his butt on the ground. Like people, everyone poops differently. Some poop more, some poop less. Three small children and a dog can be a lot of poop time.
When we first got a dog, it made me cringe that Nate referred to me as "mommy" (this was pre-baby). She was my dog, not a child. She was family, sure, but a family pet.
But I will say that if it weren't for her and the practice I got and the patience I learned, there's no way I would have been confident enough to start procreating.
Still, she's a dog.
Raising our yellow Lab has almost been more difficult than raising our two children. But now that all three - kids and dog - are past the age of two, its been smoother sailing for everyone.
And as for poop, my dog has a great love of ingesting string and tissues. You have not been humiliated until you've taken your dog outside to pull a half-pooped-out Kleenex from its ass.
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