Poop Soup

The week started out a little rough. Ruby started having tummy trouble again. We initially blamed it on the fact that she may have gotten into Murphy's food, but found out later there was another, more likely culprit. She started waking me up about every 2 hours at night. And as I've said before, if she's got to go, I'd much rather have her wake me up than have a mess to clean up. So Sunday night, up 3 times. Each time she has diarrhea. Monday I came home at lunch and she had a relatively normal poop. Walked Monday night and she had one normal poop, and then another poop soup. I figured it was just residual from eating food she wasn't used to.

Monday night, I was exhausted. She woke me up twice and through the front door and my blurry non-corrected vision, I couldn't tell with certainty what she was doing. Pee? Poop? Pretty sure I saw her chase a leaf the second time so I made a near-fatal error in judgment and decided she was sleeping in Sophie's kennel in the living room and I wasn't getting up again. I heard her once more, but ignored her and went back to sleep. In hindsight, getting up for another 5 minutes would have made for such a better start to the day.

The smell hit me when I got to the bottom of the stairs. I was ready for work with a pair of open-toed shoes on, the dog was excited and stressed all at the same time, there was poop soup coating the bottom of the kennel and the bed that's in it, some had slopped over the edges and onto the carpet, and it was 5:15am. Awesome.

Cleanup was not easy, as we discovered that every garden hose on the property squirts water in every direction except the correct one (I don't know how that happened). My banging around woke up Kevin so he got up to help. Ruby, while obviously not in trouble, THINKS she's in trouble and she's covered in poo so she's outside nervously running laps around the house. Inside, I managed to get the carpet clean. It could have been so much worse but most of it stayed in the kennel. We finally get a hose to work (this required tools...I'm not even kidding) and the sludge cleaned up outside about 5:45. Then Kevin muscles the dog (no with dried poop on her) to the bathtub and gives her a quick bath. We get all the cleanup done and Kevin is headed back upstairs when he looks in the front living room and sees another pile of poop soup. Must have been from the night before and neither of us saw or smelled it. So a second round of carpet cleaning and I get to work only about 10 minutes late. Not bad, considering the morning.

I made an appointment with the vet as soon as they opened and Ruby was there by 8:15. This was obviously more than getting a few mouthfuls of different food. Kevin's theory was that Ruby had picked up something from licking the floor drain in the basement. Something she's been obsessed with over the last couple of weeks and got into again a few days before the poop soup started. We think there was some sort of small backup when things were really wet. Although there was never anything visible, it smelled for a couple of days and she wouldn't stop licking it. We cleaned it with bleach and she still wouldn't leave it alone. We may never know if that was it or not, but Dr Burk examined a sample (easily found) and gave her some doggie immodium, first in a shot, then in pills to take for a couple of weeks. That afternoon she was still loose, but by night time she was all good.

Poor puppy. We were sleep-deprived. She was sleep-deprived and felt terrible, though she never showed it. Since then shes been fine, back to a regular schedule and even sleeping out of her kennel at night. This is becoming a necessity because she's getting close to not fitting in Sophie's kennel during the day. I'm going to move her giant kennel downstairs today so she has more room to stretch out during the workweek. This is how she woke up the rest of the week. So cute.


Other than poop, we had a pretty good week. Weather is nice, so lots of long walks. At the vet Tuesday, she was 42 pounds and on my self-made height chart, she has exceeded two pieces of paper end-to-end. So she's at least 22 inches tall at the shoulder. When we walk, she can reach up and lick my fingers easily now.

Last night on our walk, we stopped to play with Duke again. He is the sweetest boy. Dad (Greg) said he was 152 pounds at his yearly visit this week. They love to play.



We are trading out our almost 30-year-old jacuzzi tub on the deck for a newer model. Ruby has been overly curious about the space under the deck and twice has gone under there and nearly gotten stuck. Mostly in an effort to be right next to me when I'm working on it. I wonder if she'll get in the new one when it is all settled and filled up?