Koko Owes Me.

This is my dog Koko. She adores me, as you can see in the photo.


I know she looks like a big black blob in the picture, but it was kind of dark and I was trying to capture the mood so I had to shoot fast. And I know I have a goofy look on my face too, and I could go on for hours giving you awesome reasons why I look the way I do but I'm just going to say it's a bad photo altogether.

But you get the main idea. My dog loves me.

As well she should. I take her for dangerous walks in the snow, putting my comfort second and her constant need for exercise first.


I do all sorts of awesome things for her. But the past week has tested my undying love for this dog, and I think I passed with flying colors.

It all started last Friday. I felt bad for Koko because it was icy pretty much all week last week, and while I will walk her any time in the snow, I will not risk walking either of us in the ice. She wasn't even getting any exercise running around our really long backyard. She did all her...um, business on the deck.

Yes, instead of going down the stairs, which we made certain were devoid of all ice and danger, she chose to wander about 4 feet away from our sliding door to squat and leave nasty splotches of yellow and brown snow all over our deck.

In case you couldn't tell, Koko's a chocolate lab. Therefore, she is forever an excitable puppy. She's sprained her tail several times due to excitement issues. So she needs her exercise. And I got the bright idea that we should take her swimming.

There's a place in Timonium where you can reserve an indoor doggy pool for 15 minutes so your dog can swim to her heart's content, then give her a bath without breaking your back in their raised doggy tubs complete with detachable nozzle. This bath part was important because part of the reason I decided to take Koko swimming was because she was starting to smell and needed the bath.

So we all pile into the truck. Koko has anxiety issues and is not a good passenger when travelling, so she was shaking and drooling the entire 20-minute ride. But as soon as she saw the pool, she jumped right in! She swam around for a minute and chased the various floating toys we threw at her.

Then I noticed something coming out of her butt. While she was swimming. Closer inspection (and by this I mean me leaning over the pool wall) proved my theory correct. My dog had pooped in the pool. Several large sausage links of poo were at various stages of sinking to the bottom of the pool.

I was just about to open my mouth to announce my findings to TB and make figure out how to clean it up when I noticed Koko had exited the pool and was dry heaving right in front of me.

Sure enough, in addition to the present she left in the pool, there was soon a heaping pile of partially digested dog food, along with some bread crusts SB must have donated, sitting alongside it.

From that point on, she had a grand old time.


Fast forward to last night. She threw up a few times in the afternoon, which I had to clean up, which is a post in and of itself since my gag reflex is very sensitive right now. The fourth time, I realized that she was puking up blood.

Great.

So we hightailed it to the vet, who felt the need to put my 75-lb dog on the scale and raise it until she was nearly at eye level with us. Usually they examine her on the floor, probably for the very reason that I'm about to detail.

At some point during this examination, Koko decides she's had enough, she's going to jump off the table. Which wouldn't be a problem if a)Koko wasn't afraid of heights and a huge klutz and had approximately a 89% chance of landing on her face, and b) SB wasn't standing right behind the table, where Koko was intending to jump.

Somehow, my reflexes of steel sprung into action and I caught her in mid-air.

Yes, I just said I caught my 75-lb dog in mid-air. While the vet did nothing.

Actually, while I was standing there HOLDING my 75-lb dog, she commented that it was pretty impressive that I had caught a 75-lb dog. But, as much as the compliment was appreciated, that's as far as she went in terms of helping.

Did I mention I'm pregnant? I shouldn't be catching 75-lb dogs. But they shouldn't be leaping off tables. They shouldn't be on tables to begin with. And 3-year olds need to learn to listen to their mommies when they tell them to sit on the bench and stay there, and not wander around to stand behind tables that are holding stupid 75-lb dogs.

I lowered Koko to the ground, we finished the checkup, I shelled out $200 for the visits, medication and "bland food diet in a can", then headed out to pile everyone in the truck so we could go home.

On the way, I did witness a police officer handcuff a guy, put him in the back of the police car, then proceed to enter the guy's car. So that was kind of interesting.

But now, this medicine that Koko's on, or the change in her food, or both, causes diarrhea and horrible horrible HORRIBLE godawful kill-me-now gas. Which Koko feels compelled to share with the rest of us. And now our entire house smells like an overflowing toilet with a seat made out of sulfur, sitting in a dump, surrounded by decomposing animals, all of whom had at some point during their last 10 minutes of life threatened a skunk with some kind of horrible bacterial infection in its anal glands.

So yeah, life is fun. And the way I see it, Koko still owes me. It seems that every time I try to do something nice for her, she thanks me with some kind of smelly waste removal bodily function.