Quarantined

I'd like to apologize in advance to anyone who reads this.

If you read Shannon's blog, you may have seen my comment about the wonderful morning I had on Wednesday. If you don't read Shannon's blog, here's a recap:

I woke up and looked out the kitchen windows into my neighbor's backyard. This was a problem, because there should've been a fence between our windows and the neighbor's backyard. Apparently two very rainy days followed by a super windy night had done some damage to our already tattered fence. Four entire sections had fallen into the neighbor's yard and a couple of the post were not exactly vertical. As I picked up my phone to call Jamie and tell him about this unfortunate development, I glanced over at Kona still in his crate. He'd had a bit of a stomach thing going on and had thrown up Monday evening and again overnight in his crate. So when I saw something on his pillow I assumed he had tossed his cookies again. Oh if only he had just tossed his cookies...

When I opened the crate, he came running out rather frantically and I realized the something on his pillow was ALL OVER - he was covered in it, the crate was covered in it...the floor around the crate and the wall behind the crate...it was horrendous. And it. Smelled. Horrible.

Here is where I make mistake number one, both chronologically and in severity of the error - I ignored the fact that he was standing right near the back door, and chased him into the bathroom. The problem with this approach was that el poocho was leaving a wake of diarrhea every where he went - walls, floors, furniture...nothing was safe. In retrospect, I should have put him out back and hosed him down, but it was cold out and there was the fallen fence to consider. Here's a riddle: what's worse than waking up to find your neighbor's dog on your back patio? Finding your neighbor's DIARRHEA COVERED dog on your back patio. We're not super close with our neighbors. I don't think that would've strengthened the relationship.

Anyway...into the bathroom we went and Kona got the most thorough bath he'd ever gotten. And I gagged approximately 723,295,774 times. Do yourself a favor and try not to imagine the state of my clothing following this bath. It wasn't pretty.

After changing into something slightly less poo-covered, I dragged Kona's crate, pillow and blanket outside to hose down. This actually would've been the easiest part of the clean-up if it were't for the run-in my ankle had with the concrete on our patio. It's a nice sized cut, and it still hurts. Meanwhile, Kona is locked in the bathroom drying off and blessing the floor with fresh gifts from his lower intestine.

Thankfully at that point I had an epiphany - the tie-out! We'd bought it and never used it. I don't even remember why. So Kona went outside, tied to one of the fence posts that was still standing while I scrubbed the floors, walls and furniture in my entire house. The places I found diarrhea....this is the stuff nightmares are made of.

At that point, Kona was shaking violently outside because it was rather chilly and he was rather wet, so I threw his now-hosed off bed things in the washer (cycles: rinse, wash, rinse, wash, rinse...just trying to balance out all those who conserve water) and brought him inside, still on the tie-out, tethered to the back door. He may come in, but he may not come near me or my carpet until he recovers.

And that leads us to the quarantine. For the past few days, this has been the pathetic outcast pooch in my sunroom:




Sad, no? But it took 24 hours with no food and 48 eating nothing but white rice before the stomach bug started to show signs of leaving. He's still on a bland diet and still tethered to my back door, but hopefully tomorrow he'll get a good bath and be loosed, free to roam the house at his leisure once more.

But not the backyard, because the fence still has a ways to go before it's pronounced healed.