"And the Award for Best Performance in a Pet-Sitting Role Does NOT Go To..."

My intents were good. That’s all I’ll say, but I’ve never babysat another persons pet before and my inexperience landed me in some major doo-doo today, literally.

One of Husband’s athlete’s was competing in Arkansas this weekend and while she was out of town, I offered to swing by her house a couple of times a day to make sure Alex (that’s the dog) was fed and walked.

My first visit was yesterday evening. I arrived to find little Alex sitting obediently in her carry crate just as Nikki (that’s Husband’s athlete) had said. Alex was pumped to have some company and when I opened the door to her tiny crate, she bounced out of it like some sort of wind-up toy on speed. We played and chased for a while and when it came time to put her back into her crate and leave, I couldn’t do it. The idea of her being home alone in her little cell was too much, so I packed up her bed, some toys, a leash her food bowl with food and took her back to my house. This is where things started to go bad.

Upon arrival at my house, I set Alex up in the spare room. I placed her bed in what I deemed to be the coziest corner of the room. Her food and water bowl were close by and her toys weren’t too far away either. I let Alex out of her crate expecting her to prance right over to her bed, climb in and settle down for the night. Mmmm, that never happened. She was very stressed out in her new environment. She paced and yelped and gave me looks that fluctuated between anger and pleading, “how could you do this to me? Where the hell am I?” “Pleeease, get me out of here. Take me home.” This was starting to feel like not such a good idea, but I left the room thinking she would settle. Even with her constant scrapping at the door. Even when the scraping turned to jumping. Even when the yelping never stopped, I truly believed she would settle. But she didn’t, so I decided she might feel a little safer and more secure if I put her back into her crate. But no, that did not work either and she continued through the night in cycles of yelping and silence.

At 7am I decided the best thing to do was take her back to her own house. I walked into the room she was staying in and was instantly slapped in the face with the ripe, fresh smell of poo. Oh God, this is bad. I went over to the crate and looked inside. Not only had Alex pooped in her crate but she had also been twisting and turning in it for God knows how long. This was gross to the max. Times a hundred billion. Bad, bad, bad all the way to the bone. I immediately open the crate door and when I tell you she couldn’t get out of there fast enough, she-could-not-get-out-of-there-fast enough and who could blame her. But now she was belting it around the room with her tiny poo paws, putting poo everywhere. I scooped fecal Alex up in one hand and the fecal crate in the other. The crate went outside the door and Alex when straight into the bathtub where I spent 20 minutes or so apologizing and scrubbing poo off her head, paws, back and belly. It was gross. Once Alex was clean and dry, thank you my trusted hair-dryer, I went outside to deal with the crate. And honestly the less said about that the better. Lets just say there was gagging.

Once all the poo had been washed away, I decided it would be best to walk Alex before we left, just in case she wasn’t completely done with her bathroom situation. But even that was no fun. Dexter was so excited to see our little guest that he couldn’t stop himself from dive-bombing her ever time she tried to walk. He would sprint towards us hard & fast and right at the last second, right when you feared impact of the worst kind, he would bail off to the left or right and circle around for another go. It was a disaster. The whole thing was a complete disaster. And rather than put this poor little poochie through any more misery, I loaded her up and took her home.

I don’t imagine Nikki will ever let me pet-sit for her again. But can I just say, in my defense and as a closing statement, my goal heading into this was not for Alex to end up rolling around in a tiny space with her own feces, but was for her to spend the weekend hanging and bonding with some new friends and not sad and lonely at home, waiting and pining for Nikki. That and I did pick up her mail too. I rest my case.

Here are some photos of little Alex. Taken upon her clean and safe return home.