Five years. That's what the breeder told my wife and I 4 years and 11 months ago when discussing how long it would take for our newest family member, Lola, to settle down. Now, "breeder" is a relative term here. It's more like "lady who had a lot of dogs without papers and was looking to dump them for $150 apiece before she moved out of the state." So trusting her on any account might have been my own fault. Also, I just realized that, like me, my dog is a WOP.
So here's Lola, now less than a month from her fifth birthday, still a friggin' lunatic.
Purchasing or adopting a Jack Russell Terrier is something people should not take lightly. Just like the warnings of "dogs are a lot of work" aren't sufficiently understood by non-dog owners, "Jacks are crazy assholes" isn't sufficiently understood by non-Jack owners. In the first two months of living in our home, Lola ate three pairs of underwear, a credit card, $40 in cash and a $300 retainer. Being ridiculously cute puppies is very clearly a survival adaptation these dogs have developed over time.
In the time since, she's devoured multiple rolls of toilet paper, many more pairs of underwear, candles and carpet among other things. Perhaps her favorite activity, however, is purse-digging when we have visitors. Her favorite target while digging is a pack of cigarettes, meaning she's either a very avid proponent of anti-smoking campaigns or has a nicotine habit. With her nerves, I'd bank on No. 2.
Hair and string also always seem to get into her system, which makes for the occasional difficult bowel movement. By difficult I mean difficult for her to finish without my help. I gag when I pick up her shit on a walk, so pulling fresh shit from her ass is not exactly a chore I enjoy.
This brings us to this past Thursday, when Lola had one of these difficult bowel movements.
It was 6 a.m., not an unusual time for her to wake up, go to the bathroom and eat. Normally, she takes a piss, comes inside to eat, lays back down for an hour or two, then goes back outside to take her morning shit (that is, unless she determines while pissing that it's too cold outside. If this happens, she eats then immediately finds a corner in the house to shit in while her owners are still sleeping. Have I mentioned she's nearly 5 years old?).
The shit came first today, or partially came, anyway. At some point in the previous 24 hours, Lola had consumed some hair, likely my wife's which can be found in random places around the house as she's losing it thanks to stopping her pre-natal vitamin regiment. This left Lola with a dangler.
You know she has one by the way she walks away from the dump site. If she's successfully deposited her waste, she'll hop away from it, turn around to smell it, then kick grass in the opposite direction in a futile attempt to cover it. If she has a dangler, she crab walks away from the site, tries to push some more, then continues to crab walk while looking up at you with desperation in her eyes. Because I love her, I help her out, and while it's never something I'm happy about, having to do it in the dark at 6 a.m. on this day left me particularly angry.
I successfully quarantined Lola in the garage and grabbed a piece of toilet paper from the bathroom to help her finish her BM. While this is never a pleasant process for either of us, it is relatively quick. Today, however, Lola decided she wasn't going to let me help her out, baring her teeth and snapping at me as I reached down to remove this dangler. I tried again, same thing, but with a little louder growl.
"Fine, take care of it yourself," I screamed as I shut the door from the garage to the house. At my dog. Who had shit hanging from her asshole. At 6 a.m.
This, of course, led to her scratching violently at the door to come inside. After a few minutes, I opened it. Still squatting, still looking desperately at me. So I shut the door. More scratching.
"Well, you're going to have to let me get it."
More growling.
At this point, I had three options: 1. Leave my dog to spread her dangler across the garage and mat it into her fur while left to her own devices; 2. Let her in the house to do the same; 3. Put her in the shower and power wash my dog's asshole. None of these options were ideal, but No. 3 was the only one that didn't result in my wife filing for divorce.
So I scooped up Lola, shit still hanging on for dear life from her ass, and put her in the shower. It only took about three seconds of me aiming a warm stream of water at her backside for her to scramble her way out of the tub and bathroom. So I just went from dog with shit stuck to its ass in the garage to wet dog with shit stuck to its ass in the house. Fortunately, Lola isn't nearly as quick as a crab walker and I was able to corral her before she decided to wipe her ass on the carpet.
I was able to remove the dangler successfully on my second power-washing attempt, and by this time, I had to tend to my now awake 3-month old daughter. As I fed her, I thought about the words of the "breeder" and longed for Nov. 30, Lola's fifth birthday. I thought about how nice it would be to have a dog that didn't act like a crazy asshole and eat things that led to shit not fully exiting on a semi-weekly basis. I smiled at the possibility, then watched as Lola successfully grabbed the toilet paper off the roll and ran into the bedroom to eat it.
It was a cleansing moment for all of us, I guess.
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