HELP!  Our Dog Exploded Out of Both Ends!  (Part 1)

That is a picture of my dog, Zeus. 

I've been an "animal person" for as long as I can remember.  My childhood had few perks that I can recall, but one of those perks was that we always had at least a dog and a couple of cats underfoot.  When nothing else made sense in the world, I could retreat to my bedroom and cry my eyes out to an animal that didn't interrupt, judge, or (honestly) even understand me.

When I moved out of the house at 17, I moved in with my girlfriend - another 17 year old with a shitty home life.  We both had jobs, we both had an income, and we both decided to escape our equally abusive environments by getting a cheap apartment together. While I didn't end up staying with the girl, the move did have the desired effect of allowing us both some independence and freedom - and a better home life than we ever had with our parents.  (Fairly sad that two 17 year olds barely making more than minimum wage could make a "happier home" for themselves than was offered by their parents, but such is life.)

We didn't have any pets, and we were busy with work and school so we didn't think about them much.  Then one day a stray cat walked up to me in the parking lot.  Very purposefully, very specifically, walked up to me and rubbed against my legs.  The cat was some kind of Siamese-mix, looked to be healthy, and was spray painted purple.  Yes, the cat was spray painted.

I remember my original reaction being one of, "Aww, poor kitty!" - and then I shrugged and turned to ignore it like any of the dozens of stray cats living in our apartment complex - they usually didn't like being approached and it's never a good idea to approach a strange animal anyway.  Well, I didn't need to approach it because it walked across the entire parking lot and up the stairs to our apartment.  The cat had apparently seen me, decided that I was a "cat person", and that I was going to take care of it from that point on.  The cat was right, because I allowed it into my home, fed it, cleaned it up, and she's still sitting here next to me 13 years later. (The cat obviously outlasted the ex girlfriend.)

My father hated cats, which was reason enough for me to decide to love them.  As for dogs... who doesn't love dogs?  They were never really an option for me, however, because I like big dogs that I can take for long hikes in the desert - German Shepherds, Black Mouth Curs - that sort of dog.  Living in an apartment, I settled for a cat. Then another cat.  Then another and... oh wow, look, now there's 5 cats...

This continued on for a while as my high-school sweetheart and I went our separate ways, I lived on my own for a time and eventually I met the woman who I would marry.  The woman who is now my wife was indifferent to animals, in the beginning.  She gradually developed first a love for than an obsession with cats.  My evil work with her was done for I had turned another human being into that most peculiar of beings...  a cat lover.

More time continued.  Eventually, my wife and I were able to rent our first home.  We still hadn't bought our first home yet - that came later - but FINALLY here was a place that I could not only have my herd of cats, I could have my dreamed-of "big dog" as well!

We rented our house with some friends and eventually got that dog. He was perfect.  He was a humane-society rescue dog, a half-and-half mix of German Shepard and Black Lab.  (It's an awesome mix of personalities, in case anyone is wondering.)  To give you an idea of HOW perfect this dog was, we brought him home from the humane society at 6 months old into a house with 5 cats.  He NEVER once attacked or attempted to even bother the cats.  He NEVER had an accident.  My only question about the dog was... how the HELL could somebody give up a dog like this?!  At 6 months old, this dog was intelligent, house broken, leash-trained, sweet, and adorable to boot.  Also - no health problems, he was a beautiful dog.  I guess we just "lucked out" - some parents got a puppy for their kid and the kid didn't end up taking care of it and viola!  Perfectly good dog ends up in shelter, and shelter dog ends up with me - a (hopefully) perfectly good owner looking for decent dog.

Well, a year passes.  My wife and I end up buying a house with our partner Jon.  (A different blog post entirely.  Or series of them.) Our dog matures into a beautiful, almost (dare I say it?) majestic specimen of the canine species.  Everyone - without exception - loves our dog.  

One quirk - we have no children.  There are three income-earning adults in this household, none of whom have children, all of whom share responsibility for the animals.  As you might imagine, our animals are spoiled rotten.  They receive better housing, food, and medical care than most humans on this Earth do.  We have a vet that we absolutely love, and when there's a problem with an animal, we take the animal to the vet - so far, we've been relatively lucky in that most of our animals are quite healthy.

Until what I like to call The Morning of Horror.

My wife and I woke up one morning as usual - I don't have a job that requires me to leave the house, she does.  When we wake up together, I usually make coffee while she starts her shower - we keep our house very dark, and we sleep in one end of the house while the dog sleeps in his crate in the living room.  Our dog is crate trained, and he generally goes into the crate by himself at night when we get ready to sleep.  This was a morning like any other - we went to sleep around 11PM the night before and were waking up at around 5AM to start the day.  We exited the bedroom, walked out into the living room and exclaimed, "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT SMELL?!" - it was raw sewage, except worse.  My living room smelled like a sewer.  And it was dark, and 5AM, and we were half asleep, and we had no coffee yet and THIS WAS NOT COOL.

After a while of stumbling around in the darkness, we realize that the smell is coming from the dog's crate.  I turn on a light and... oh, wow.

The dog exploded.  Literally out of both ends - the crate and a good portion of our living room were covered in vomit and other, less pleasant substances.  The dog - a 75lb very muscular dog - had partially destroyed his crate in an attempt to get out in the middle of the night.  Normally we would hear the dog if he wanted out in the night, and we would let him out - this is VERY rare for a large adult dog, but it happens.  For whatever reason, we were so sound asleep that we didn't hear him trying to bust out of the crate.  So he got sick... inside his crate.

I have never felt so bad for anything in my life.  Here was our dignified dog, never had an accident in the house, never really had any behavioral problem whatsoever - and he was covered in his own sick, stuck in a half-destroyed crate that he had apparently in his desperation to not soil his bedding tried to rip his way out of.  Even in his state, he patiently wagged his tail and waited for us to let him out into the yard so he could go... um, be more sick.

I was never more happy to have a garden hose, both for the dog and the crate.

We were devastated for our poor dog.  First we vowed to move his crate into the bedroom and make sure that someone could hear him from now on - this was never an issue before over two years of dog ownership, but apparently it was now.  Then we tried to figure out what made him so sick and it was pretty obvious... we changed his food.  Our dog, unfortunately, doesn't do well on ANY commercial pet food.  We used to make his food at home, but for a couple of reasons we got lazy and decided to find a "premium" store-brand dog food for him.  Well...  now we're back to making this.

 

 

 

Continued in Part 2 - The pet food industry, pets, and the pet

food wars.