Disgusting Things Dogs Do

It finally looks and feels like January around here. There is nearly a foot of snow covering everything. When the bright winter sun is shining strong, as it is this morning, the beauty of it just takes your breath away. Or is it just the frigid zero degree temperature of the air that does that?

I want to go out and take pictures to show how beautiful it all is. Well, not really, I want to stay inside where it is warm. What I really want is to have pictures to show how beautiful it is. However, my camera battery is dead, and even though I wasted a bit of time hunting around for the battery charger, it's location remains a mystery to me, and the beautiful snow pictures are, as yet, untaken.

I provide a photo from a past winter to give a very good approximation of what the current landscape now looks like. The most important thing about winter though is not what it looks like, as impressive and as beautiful as that might be, but how it feels. Winter must be experienced to fully appreciate its grandeur and its magnificence. It is something felt.

I was taking this all in this morning, telling myself, "You are not going to write about the dogs today, think about something else," while the dogs and I were engaged in our usual morning rituals. I was enjoying watching them negotiate the new experiences of piles of snow, frozen paws and everything familiar to them being covered over and lost. "Where the heck is the grass! What did they do with the grass! What are we supposed to do without any grass!"

Remember the well regarded adage that always brings a smile or a chuckle when it is told, "Do not eat yellow snow!" It encourages one to use good common sense and deductive reasoning, to be cognizant and aware of ones environment.

Dogs do not get that one, apparently; they eat yellow snow. Yes, it is true. There they were, my cute poochies, following each other, eagerly lapping up the newly formed, icy amber concoction, as if it were the best gourmet Italian gelato. The reverie of a potentially sublime moment was shattered. Disgusting.

When it comes to doing disgusting things, whoa boy, do not let me stop with yellow snow. Concerning their mouths and stomachs, it seems that the dogs have no standards. They consume not only their own waste, but also the waste of nearly every other animal on our acreage. Disgusting.

Moreover, this disgusting dietary supplementation produces the most vile, putrid, foul-smelling flatulence possible. It is so bad that it has to be hazardous to your health to breath. Disgusting.

And what about this vomit, I think I'll eat my dinner again thing? Disgusting, yes, but I'm sitting there going, "Finish it all up, I'm not cleaning any of that up." Who's being disgusting? Disgusting.

I can continue and generate a litany of disgusting dog behaviors, but I will not. Wouldn't it be fun, though, to get a bunch of dog owners together and play the game of who could gross each other out the most with disgusting dog stories? Sort of like when doctors gather and tell each other their most interesting cases stories. If there is a non-medical family member around, they usually put a kibosh on it before getting totally freaking grossed out.

I have to remind myself, it is not the dogs that are disgusting, it is the things that the dogs do that are disgusting. Love the dogs; hate the behavior. Hmm, bit of a stretch, but works for me. They're just so cute.

But I never let them lick me on the lips. No way, no how, never. I've seen where that tongue goes and my lips are not a butt hole! Disgusting!