Warning: Poo talk

Dog lovers, much like parents of infant children, have this odd fascination with the consistency of their dog's crap and if you spend any time at off leash parks you may regularly be privy to "state of the poop" addresses by fellow dogists. One of these conversations might go a little like this:

Jane: Hi, how's Fluffy doing? (note: Jane asked about the dog, not John. At dog parks it is only required to know the names of the dogs - common dog park etiquette)

John: Well, his energy's fine, but his poop is a little loose. I mean, not explosive diarrhea, but runny. No blood though, thank God!

Sorry if your gut is turning, but most of the people who read this blog are not just dog lovers but they are crazy dog lovers, so you're just nodding your head going, "Yeah? How is this weird?"

Now, in case there is some lone cat person who accidentally stumbled upon this blog thinking they were visiting the "Rescued Catties" blog or something, you should now exit the blog because I am going to delve into actual dog poo talk now, not the imaginary stuff, and it might be a little too much for a cat person to handle. Consider yourself warned.

Anyhoooooo... This has all been a lead up to a very disgusting post about the state of my current foster dogs' poop. As you've read in past blog posts, when Nova and Astro first arrived here they were loaded with worms. The worms have since been shipped off to the landfill, since the pups have had their 2nd dose of Strongid for the roundworms and hookworms, and then a shot of Droncit for the tapeworm issue. But recently, another Ratbone volunteer who is fostering 4 pups from the same litter said something about wondering whether they also had coccidia. She said that I should watch their poop for mucous and blood and also sniff the poop to check if it smells worse than usual. Yeah, right.

Now, I've mentioned before my very active gag reflex. Because of this I don't make a habit of breathing through my nose when I'm in the back yard on a scooping mission. I mean, I do get a little obsessive about the thought that by breathing this way I'm sucking poop molecules into my mouth... but I digress. So now I've got to figure out if the poop smells worse than regular poop that I haven't been smelling in the first place. How does one go about doing this? Once I start gagging, I'm not able to rate anything on a 1 to 10 scale and since normal poop makes me gag, I'm at a loss.

Astro is making this tough too because his poo will seem like normal dog crap one time and then the next time the poo will be all runny. All I'm asking for is a little consistency! (No pun intended.) I think I'm going to give up on trying to self diagnose the poo and just take some into the vet's office, pay the $25 and let them deal with it.

So poo issues continue here in rescueland. Until resolved we will continue with our routine of wandering around in the yard until they poop so we can go to the off-leash park without worrying about spreading our little potential bacterial sidekicks. The state of the poo is - unknown.