Heart Like a Dog

The Good, the Bad, and the Oh My God of living with dogs!

Ten Creative Ways to Use Poop Bags

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There was a time when I walked both dogs at the same time. To accomplish this, I brought a ton of dog paraphernalia along. Camera, cell phone, treat bag, poop bags, pepper blaster. When I drove up to the park, I added in car keys. To accommodate all these items, I needed a small backpack, decent size fanny pack or pants with lots of deep pockets.

Dog walking essentials

The basic dog walking essentials…cell phone, car keys (to drive to park) pepper blaster and treat bag. Only thing missing? Poop bags!

Now that I walk the dogs individually, I’ve pared down the items I carry with me. In the summer it’s simple, my pepper blaster in my reflective vest pocket, my cell phone in my pants/shorts pocket, a treat pouch and a couple of poop bags in my back pocket.

In the darker, winter months, I carry a very large, stand-on-its own flashlight. I usually throw three poop bags in my back pocket and keep one or two in the front pocket of my treat pouch, just in case. I mean, there have actually been days when for whatever reason, I’ve walked out without a poop bag in my back pocket.

I’ve found it’s always helpful to have an extra poop bag or two, because you just never know when you may need a spare. I mean like, sometimes, you have those messy, soft poops. I don’t know about you, but sometimes I struggle to pick those bitches up. More than once I’ve found myself with some er…um..residue on my hands. When that happens, I stick one poop bag inside the other, because odds are, if I have poop on my hands, I have poop on the bag, if I have poop on the bag, I can get it on the leash, or the flashlight….well you get the point.

Having extra poop bags sure comes in handy. Besides using it for double baggers, here are some other ways I’ve used extra poop bags in the past.

    • Wet gloves. You know those rainy, sleeting days in winter? Sometimes your gloves get wet. You have two choices, you can wear them. Wet. OR since your hands are going to be cold and wet anyway, take them off and carry them home.
    • Broken poop bags. It doesn’t happen all that often, but I have pulled out a poop bag, opened it up, scooped that poop, only to have a turd bounce off one of my toes.
    • Acorns. Weird right? Sometimes I have little girls come along on a walk. Both my granddaughter and my great niece love to collect acorns, but they rarely bring anything to collect them in. Enter the poop bag.
    • Food, bones or glass. Honestly, I’ve encountered all of these items on walks in my neighborhood. I won’t leave glass just sitting around, and if there is food and a certain dog finds it before me, even if I can get her to leave it, she remembers where it was and keeps going back again and again.

      You know I can leave it, but we will revisit this tomorrow.

  • Birch scent. Once when Delilah and I were taking a nosework class, our instructor was sending us all home with a small birch scent. Trouble was, she had nothing to store it in. Enter….the spare poop bag.
  • Mischief. This may come as a surprise to some of you, but once in a while I feel a little rebellious, mostly on garbage days when the everyone has their trash to the curb. On those days when I don’t feel like hauling that little bag around, I oh-so-casually slip that little baggie into a neighbor’s bin. Preferably in one of the DADO neighbor’s bin.
  • Pony tails. WTF? I know, but it was a super-hot day and I forgot to pull my hair back before leaving on our walk. As I plodded along cursing myself, the heat, the humidity, I wondered, just how I could get that hair off my hot, sticky neck. Thankfully I don’t have really thick hair, or I don’t think I could have pulled this one off.

Creative or crude? You decide.

Now, I haven’t actually used a poop bag for the following, but I can see these might be times a spare bag could come in handy.

  • Vomit. I got this idea from one of my oldest friends (and former boss.) Once, back in the day when we were oh so young, we were on our way to cash our paychecks. It was a warm day, and coupled with the rocking of the car and the heavy drinking of the night before, my friend felt very nauseous. While waiting in line at the drive-thru, she found a plastic bag, and very quietly purged what ailed her. Granted it wasn’t a poop bag, but a poop bag would totally work.
  • Tapeworms. EWWWW. A while back Sampson had tapeworm. I found myself needing to isolate the specimen and while I brought along a clear plastic baggie, if I didn’t have one, the spare poop bag would have done the job.
  • Temporary water bowl. Granted my poop bags are scented, but in a pinch you could line a ball cap with a poop bag, or make a small ring with rocks to hold the bag and you could definitely get your dog some water.

Well, there you have it. Ten creative ways to use poop bags. Have you ever used a poop bag for something other than what it was intended for?

 

Seeing-Eye-Person

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Shortly after we got Delilah, Hubby and I both thought she had trouble seeing. When I mentioned it at a vet appointment, the vet took a scrap of paper and let it fall down in front of Delilah and Delilah watched it fall, and that was that.

Now that Delilah has been diagnosed with a degenerative cornea disease, I know I should have pushed it farther, and perhaps taken her to an ophthalmologist right away.

My philosophy of late has been, “When we know better, we do better.” I’m not beating myself up over this, but I am taking mental notes for the future and will be more diligent in paying attention to things with my dogs.

While the ophthalmologist says Delilah will probably not go blind from this disease, Hubby and I can both tell there are areas where she has trouble seeing.

She’s ‘looking’ at me, but I’m actually more towards her right.

We think her eyesight is one of the reasons we’ve never been able to teach her how to NOT SNATCH food from your hands. Well….she is a lab, and labs love food, but she does take it to the extreme. You have to be super diligent with her, show her the treat, bring it down in front of her mouth and say, “Easy” and you’ve got a 10% chance of keeping your fingers. If you don’t (which most times we don’t even think of it,) all bets are off.

I know if I have a light colored treat and put it on a dark background (or vice versa) she can easily find it, but put dark colored treat on a dark background, and it takes her a very long time to find it.

We have a strict rule in the house, “No rearranging of furniture!” 🙂

Walks can be challenging, especially as the days shorten, and more of our walks are taken in the dark. I mean, there are any number of obstacles that can present themselves.

I have seen her walk into a branch, jump when our friend on a bike approached (even though she called over to us and Delilah turned, she didn’t know she was on a bike), jump when a sewer was suddenly there, not see animals in yards or roads, and there was that one time when she walked through a bramble bush, and got the vine stuck on the bridge of her nose.

I decided the best way I can help her, is to be a seeing-eye person for her.

The way I’m doing this is naming objects on our walks so she can easily navigate around them.

Here are the things I’m naming (when I remember to do it.)

Trash Can – This usually only happens on Wednesdays, which is the day our trash is picked up. But sometimes it’s on Thursdays and Fridays too, because we do have some lazy muther-fuckers in our neighborhood who don’t bring their trash bins in right away.

Car – This might seem like it’s silly to name, but really, if it’s a dark walk and a dark car….the combo could be ugly.

Sewer – The smell alone should warn her, but still, we can’t have a dog panicking because her leg went down a sewer grate.

Person – I was going to say jogger, but then what if it’s a walker? Or just a person standing there? I decided to not make this any more complicated than it is. Things are complicated enough inside my head, remembering person is hard as it is.

Branch – Once, she walked through a small branch/stick that happened to be shaped like a Y. She walked a few paces with that shit balanced on her nose before I was able to take it off. And yes, I did contemplate taking a photo before I removed it.

Bike – I don’t know about you, but the bikers in my area always seem to ride with traffic. I don’t get it, but because we are usually walking against traffic, we run encounter these peeps. A startled dog can do any number of things, and I’d just as soon as not have to write about that here.

Dog – Truthfully, most of the dogs in my neighborhood announce themselves, but on the off chance we encounter a slacker, I’m teaching her this.

Dog! On your left! There’s a dog!

Cross (for cross the street) – She’s usually pretty in tune with where I’m going, but if her snooter is caught up with a smell and she’s not paying attention, I’m teaching her what cross means.

I was going to just keep it general and teach, Object, a general term to encompass all things, but let’s face it, walking around a car is a little different than walking around a sewer, and a person is much bigger than a dog…

I suppose with winter coming we’re going to have to learn ice, snow bank, plow truck….

Did I miss any? Can you think of something that should be named on a walk?

Where Does a Fourteen Year Old Dog Sleep?

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Sampson turned fourteen at the end of July. We’ve always used that, dogs age seven years for every one human life rule. If that in fact were the case, Sampson would be 88 years old.

Of course, I wanted to be sure, so I consulted Dr. Google, and found this article from the AKC. According to this, Sampson is 84 years old.

Either way you look at it, this dog is in his eighties. Now, like most people in their eighties, my puppy boy is slowing down. In fact, he only goes outside to do his ‘business’ twice per day. Once on our morning walk, and once on our evening walk.

You follow? This guy only pees every 12 or so hours.

I bet most eighty-year-olds pee a lot more than that. Honestly, I’m 58 and I pee when I sneeze, cough, laugh, walk…

Both walks combined, take no more than an hour, and that’s assuming we stop to chat with someone on our afternoon walk.

Sampson eats, twice a day, and that takes about all of 20 minutes. He gets one snack (a frozen Kong) around 9:00 pm, which takes him 10 to 15 minutes to eat.

If you add it all up, and factor in the times we come home from work, the times we are moving about, let’s be generous and say, he’s awake 4 hours per day.

Which leaves the other 20 hours for….?

Sleeping.

Yes, my boy sleeps, and he sleeps A LOT.

There are two dog beds in my living room, and a dog bed and a crib mattress in my bedroom.

Delilah typically chooses one place to sleep, and stays there. Sampson on the other hand is a mover. He gets up many times throughout the day and night, and changes position, or he changes the area he is sleeping on. Sometimes he’s on a bed, sometimes he’s just sleeping on the floor.

Sometimes I look at him, and the position he’s in, and I wonder, just how comfortable it is.

Like the other night, when I went to give him his Kong, and he had to extricate himself from the table of all places.

Naturally, I laughed. He’s such a silly guy.

The title of this post asks, “Where Does a Fourteen Year Old Dog Sleep?”

Answer: Anywhere he wants. 🙂

You make me laugh or smile. The sweet, funny, loving things dogs do that brings a smile to my face, or a laugh to my lips.

What did your pet do this week that made you smile or laugh?

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