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I don’t know what I expected my wife to do the other morning when I shouted, “Poop! I stepped in poop!” Magically make things better?
I’d walked downstairs in my pajamas to let the dogs out. Ruth was upstairs in bed. She’s taken to putting in earplugs so she can sleep through the chatter of the birds. But that meant she couldn’t hear my desperate cries.
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Because I didn’t want to track the, um, dirt through the house, I dropped to the floor. And then, like a soldier under sniper fire, I crawled on my hands and knees from the hallway into the nearest bathroom. There, I assessed the situation.
One thing was certain: It was time to reset the sign that reads, “It’s been X days since Merlin pooped in the house.”
Merlin belongs to our daughter, who has a busy, travel-filled summer, so we agreed to dog-sit her nine-pound Yorkiepoo/Chihuahua mix. We already have Archie, a big yellow Lab. How hard could it be to keep an eye on a tiny, four-legged mop?
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“Harder than you’d think,” I thought to myself as I awkwardly lifted my bare foot into the tiny powder room sink and turned on the faucet.
Merlin was rescued from the mean streets of Los Angeles. I don’t know if everyone there poops in the living room — the hall, the kitchen, the porch — but Merlin does. He seems not to know any better.
And yet Merlin knows not to do it when we’re looking. This summer has been like one of Sherlock Holmes’s less-popular detective stories: “The Case of the Stealth Poop.” There’s no poop when we go to bed. There’s no poop when we let him out in the morning. But in the 30 seconds it takes to go out front to get the newspaper from the driveway? Poop!
We’ve taken to scrolling back through the Ring cameras positioned in the house to see when he’s getting away with it. Sometimes we find Merlin hunched in the grainy black-and-white footage, his eyes shining like a panther caught on a trail cam.
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Last week was a rough one, dogwise. One day, Archie started coughing dramatically. Well, not coughing, more like throwing up, or trying to throw up. He’d stand up, open his mouth, pull back his lips, bare his teeth and give a honking hack. He looked like a dog from a George Booth cartoon.
This was so worrying that Ruth took him to an emergency animal hospital. The vet there said Archie had kennel cough. She said Merlin doubtless had it, too, because both of them had spent two nights at a kennel when Ruth and I nipped up to Ithaca. They’re both vaccinated against it, but as with the human flu shot, that’s not a total safeguard against infection.
Archie and Merlin should be better in a few days. We’ve been taking it easy with them, giving them a cough suppressant, running a humidifier and going on shorter walks.
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It was on just such a walk — early in the morning, before it got too hot — that we had our next dog drama. Merlin suddenly emitted a high-pitched yelp, then flipped on his back and started gnawing on a paw.
I was afraid I’d accidentally stepped on him — Merlin is eminently step-on-able — but when I knelt down I saw something writhing in the grass that was even smaller than Merlin.
Merlin had managed to step on a bee and get stung.
I called Ruth to bring the car around so Merlin wouldn’t have to walk. At home, we examined his paw and called the vet. She said to make sure the stinger was out — it was — and give him some Benadryl.
Merlin recovered quickly and to celebrate pooped the next night in the dining room.
Still and all, we can’t hate him too much. Evolution has conditioned humans to crave cuteness. It’s why we don’t chuck babies out the window. Merlin’s type — small, furry, with a face that is half Ewok and half Wilford Brimley — has been bred to appeal to the human desire to cuddle something soft and warm.
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And he has the quirkiest gait when he runs, carrying himself at an amazing clip on his little pipestem legs. When we throw his stuffed toy, he goes after it like a lion chasing down a gazelle on the Serengeti. Merlin has no reason to be plucky, but plucky he is.
It remains to be seen whether Merlin can learn not to poop in the house. One thing is certain: I’ve learned not to take a step anywhere without first turning on a light.
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