pointless rant about dog poop

For the past week, I've been walking my parent's dogs twice daily as they've been lounging under palm frond umbrellas, and scaling the sides of volcanoes in Hawaii. One of the dogs is like my sister. She's lived with us for thirteen of her fourteen years, and she's only become more beautiful, sweet and, more importantly, less vocal. Jimmy calls her our Golden Girl, and she is as old, cute and funny as Dorothy (funny) or Rose (cute). The other dog is a little cutie they recently inherited from a neighbor who died, and whom they took in because she was an orphan and my mom felt like she could relate to her. However, she is loud. She's loud and she poops everywhere... all the time. She needs to be walked twice a day, and still I find little droplets of poo around every corner.

This morning at 6:30, they started with the barking. The older one first, just random barks, saying, "let me piss in the backyard." and then the younger one, who's too good to do the deed in the backyard, chimed in at about 7, you know, a.m. I put them out back where they continued to be completely liberated females. At almost 9, when the sound of their barks made me want to rip my own ears out, I finally got up and took them on a walk around the block. Now, you have to understand that I have a cat. My cat is being neglected at home because these canines are as needy as 20 children. I have had my large, handsome, tom cat for over 7 years now, and he's well loved. I love loving him, and it's easy to love him; all he does is eat, sleep, cuddle and shit in or around the litter box. I have never known the stresses of dog life. I mean, if my cat meows, it's cute, and if I tell him to stop, he stops, but these beasts, they don't stop, they won't stop.

Anyway, the point of this story was to note that I have never really had to care about any animals' bowel movements before, other than my own. My brother and I are heavy duty gas musicians- and this has been cause for some embarrassment and much laughter- but when it comes time to do the duty (doodie), I know what's to be done and where to go. However, with the new little dog, I have to trail it around around CG for at least 15 minutes watching its ass, waiting for something to be uncovered. I can't even think about going home before it makes its case, or else I dread the clean up I'll have to endure after I arrive home from work. To make matters worse, it seems she will only drop her deuces on the lawn of our neighbor who is always looking outside, and also on the grass in front of the house the 2 priests live in. Yes, she's subversive, and that's admirable, but I swear, it makes me so stressed, waiting for her to pinch off a loaf. I mean real, real stress, too.

I cannot wait until this dog watching is over and I can go back to the quiet love of my gigantic cat-beast. But until then I'm imagining the presents waiting for me at my parents' home.