Blood, shit, tears and a garbage strike

When I got home from grocery shopping at 3pm yesterday Langley was pretty calm so I decided to take him back to the vet's to retry getting blood for the tests.  We wanted to try to rule out some physical diseases that might be a culprit.  It was a long shot since he is otherwise so completely healthy but we wanted to cover all the bases.

The vet let him down in the exam room and watched him pace and move and sniff frantically at every crevice and cranny. After watching him a bit her eyes were open wide and all she said was "Wow!" before regaining her composure.  "Wow!" is rarely a great thing to hear at the vets office. Temperature was taken and was normal.  Everything keeps checking out but that little brain of his. We'll get the full results of the blood test today sometime.

Since he's become pretty dog reactive during this breakdown I rushed him out of the office to his crate in the car and went back inside to pay the bill.  When I opened the driver's door to leave a wall of stench hit me.  Langley had a stress poop in the 400 series crate I had wedged into the back seat and then had paced through it and scraped it all over the inside. 

I was either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid but I decided that the 25 minute drive home would be easier if I got the bulk of the poop at the front of the crate out before the drive. Let me just give you a word of advice.  If you have a fully manic, covered in crap, 20 pound terrier locked in a crate do not choose to open the door while the crate is in the back seat of your car and you are in a parking lot.  With a crazed look in his eyes Langley punched off the back wall of the crate like an Olympic swimmer, straight at me.  I hooked his collar and held him in the crate with one hand as I attempted to use paper towels to grab at the stinky blobs inside. His legs flailed as he tried to reach me, poopy pads contacted face, hair, arms, clothing, car upholstery...

I wiped the poop and tears off of my face and hands, and got out my cell phone to call home.  "Hunter, there's been an epic poop disaster in the car!  Get things ready for a dog bath and an outdoor crate spray down."  Only the child of a dog rescuer would be able to translate this into having all the tools for the clean up ready when I got home.  When I got home, Hunter and Jordan opened doors for me and then stepped far, far away as Langley and I slowly made our way, crate and all, upstairs to the bathroom.

After he was all clean and sweet smelling he was put in a clean crate downstairs (barking crazily in protest) while Hunter and I went outside with the crate.  The blankets and chew inside were put in a garbage bag and taken to the garage. Then the crate was power blasted with the hose and finally carefully cleaned and sanitized and left to dry in the sun.

This is the 2nd crate poop disaster we've had in two days. Sadly the trash collectors are on strike here and now along with my already full garbage can I have 2 bags full of the poopy remnants of this week in my garage. I don't want to put it outside as the crows will come and tear them open. However, I may need to come up with something different as the poop fumes in the garage have now reached a level that surely must be toxic. 

I now find the whole adventure quite humorous.  This means that either I am tougher than I thought or I have crossed over the line and am full on as crazy as Langley at this point.  I'm telling my self it's the former.