initiative & love

I don’t know if we switched up his dog food or if he just had some freakish gut issue for a day or two, but last week our boy Ryder had some serious doggie diarrhea.

(You know, I’ve written about kid poop and vomit and all the kinds of disgusting, why not dog diarrhea – eh?)

It was so bad that my Google history will reveal some pretty bizarre searches on how to ease all of our suffering over here.

At any rate, I think it was a day when everything was already kind of chaotic and when we walked into our home and smelled the horrific dog poop scent wafting from Ryder’s kennel I just kind of wanted to solve the problem by moving right then and there.  Moving – as in – driving to another house, any other house, and living in that poop-free house forever.

That didn’t seem like an option the kids would get on board with.  So.

The kids really are great little team players so we chose a divide and conquer method.  Berg took the guilty party for a long walk and Mosely gathered clean up supplies.  Unfortunately, Ryder managed to poop exactly in the corner edge of his kennel, cramming the feces along the wires under the kennel.  The kennel that is so large and takes up the majority of our laundry room that a human cannot really fit between the kennel and the wall on three sides, thus making cleaning said kennel of said feces incredibly difficult and cumbersome and plain old maddening.

London held the kennel up in the air while I squirted every better-smelling cleaner I could find on the wire rungs in an attempt to dislodge the – uh – poop without touching it with any appendage of my own.

I could go on and on here.

Suffice it to say, it was a nasty job and London and I were alternately trying to make one another laugh and complaining about the job’s difficulty with each stink-filled breath we took.

After all that work and stench, Ryder eventually made his way back into his tidy kennel and I scrubbed my hands until they hurt and then collapsed on my bed.

Not too much later that evening I heard a little action happening in the laundry room but my name wasn’t called so I maintained my position.

Minutes later London was collapsing on the bed by my side.

“Well, Mom.  He did it again.  Ryder pooped in his kennel again!”

My head fell back against the bed.  I sighed and said, “Alright.  Let’s go conquer this.”

She said, “Oh no, Mom.  I already cleaned it all up.  I’m just letting you know he pooped.”

I grabbed that cute growing-up kid and hugged her tight.

“You know what that is to me London?”

She looked at my face.

“That – my sweet girl – is love.  That is love in action and it’s just my favorite kind. Thank you!”