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?

 

Yes, I Make My Bed – For My Dog

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When I first rejoined the work force after having my girls, my manager at the bank was a lovely Jamaican woman. She would tell us stories of her life in Jamaica, before she came to the states.

One of the ‘lessons’ she gave us, was telling us how her mother told her, to never leave the house without making her bed, and putting on clean underwear, BECAUSE, if you got hit by a car and they had to bring you home and put you in your bed, that bed needed to be made, and your underwear needed to be clean!

Making my bed before I leave for the day is something I always make sure to do, but not because I’m worried someone is going to bring me home and put me to bed. No, I make my bed for another reason.

Some people, when they sleep, are restless and move all over the place. They get up in the morning and their bed coverings are all over the place. It looks like a WWE match took place there.

You gotta smooth those covers out, and make that bed look nice.

WHAT was I thinking when I sponged that wall?

I’m not (at this menopausal stage of my life) what could be termed a ‘restful’ sleeper. What that means is most nights, I sleep, but I wouldn’t consider it a deep sleep. I wake up frequently, to shift positions, or flip that pillow over, or get up to pee. But even in my restlessness, I take care with those covers.

Maybe it comes from the days of kids climbing in bed with me, or the days when both dogs slept on the bed. Whatever the reason, most mornings I can get up and my bed mostly looks made.

We have dog beds all over the house. Two in the living room (plus the dog’s couch,) one dog bed in my room, and a crib mattress (that doubles as a dog bed) also in my room.

And yet, there’s a certain dog in my home, that loves to snuggle down on the Mama’s bed, when the Mama is at work.

I’m truly okay with that. Both dogs are in those senior years where I really want them to have comfortable, happy lives.

What I don’t want, is for my bed to be mussed and trussed like it’s a Thanksgiving turkey. Nor do I want to climb into my bed and have the sheets look like someone dumped a container of chocolate sprinkles on them.

After that fiasco, and having to change my bed sheets at bedtime, I started making my bed in the morning.

For Delilah.

Shhhhh……All this yapping makes it hard for me to get my beauty rest.

I determined, based upon her habit of pulling the bedspread back, and sleeping on the sheets, that she likes the feel of the sheets.

And while it’s true, I want her to be happy and comfortable, I also don’t want to have to change the sheets every night, so I came up with a compromise.

Okay, you don’t have to point out that I am the one compromising. I understand that. She is after-all a dog, and has no verbal negotiating skills. Unless you count her barking, groaning, sighing….okay, so she does have some verbal skills, but NO reasoning skills. Of course, she’d argue she has reasons for ALL her skills.

Sigh.

Back to the subject at hand.

I had an old, over-sized queen sheet, and my little futon (if I’m being generous,) is a full-size bed.

You follow?

So every morning, I get up, walk both dogs, and then come home and make my bed for the day.

Siriusly, that wall.

For Delilah.

Yes, I always make my bed before leaving the house, but I don’t make it for me, I make my bed for my dog.

What do you do to spoil your pets?

Next!

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Sampson and Delilah get walks twice per day, at almost exactly 12 hours apart. Typically around 5:00 am and 5:00 pm.

Because most of our neighbors aren’t outside at 5:00 am [some people are actually sensible and sleep in 😉 ] we visit our neighbors in the evening.

Sampson is drawn to people more so than Delilah, and he’s made a few friends on the street that loops around behind our house. Because of this, we tend to head that way in the evenings.

He’s made friends with the families in three houses, right in a row. His favorite (don’t tell the others) is by far, is the Whinnems, and they live in the middle of these three houses. Mrs. Whinnem in particular is typically his target. I know when I see the garage door open that Mrs. Whinnem is probably outside working in the yard. When the garage door is closed, she’s usually in the house, but sometimes she sees us through the window, and will come outside to love on her favorite dog.

As soon as we turn the corner onto her road, Sampson heads right for her house. Usually he stops as soon as he hits her property line, and I have to coax him up a bit to sit in front of the window, so she can see us.

That’s what he’s doing here. He’s staring at Mrs. Whinnem’s house, hoping he can will her outside.

This particular day, Mrs. Whinnem did not come out, so I got him up and moving again, and he went up to the next house, and tried to will Mrs. James out.

Failing that, he went back to the Whinnem’s and I coaxed him past. Then he noticed that Mrs. Swanson’s garage door was up, so he roo’d to her, but she didn’t come out either, so I finally convinced him to head home.

Honestly, his persistence in trying to see his friends, really made me smile.

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

You make me smile, or laugh. The sweet, funny, loving things our pets do that make us smile or laugh.

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