Poop

Last night while both kids were crying and simultaneously not eating what we’d made for dinner, one of the dogs puked something all over the new rug in Leta’s room. I say something because I finally learned to stop trying to figure out what it is. That information is never rewarding. You’re never like, GOD I’m glad I know my dog just puked up her own feces. File that one away for the next time I take the SAT!

The color of the vomit was not like the color of the vomit that we’ve found in six different places over the last four days. We just know it was dog vomit, which narrows the suspects down to two. Do dogs vomit in different colors? Should I be that intimate with my dogs’ vomit? As intimate as I am with my child’s poop so that I know whether or not my husband has secretly been feeding her licorice when I’m not around?

(Having your adorable, soft baby give you a kiss only for it to reek of black licorice is not unlike discovering that your dog has just puked her own feces. This is my plea to you, Jon. Life is too short for me to avoid kisses from my toddler.)

Do they teach you in sex education that if you’re a parent and are shown a specimen of poop without any explanation, you’re able to tell if it came out of one of your children? Because that chapter should come before any of the fun pictures of genitalia.

I ask because I never took a sex ed class. And didn’t see a penis until I was so old that I thought my boyfriend had a really awful tumor.

Anyway, one or both of the dogs keeps throwing something up. And I keep cleaning it up without figuring out what’s inside it or causing it. Because it keeps happening at a time when I would have to collect a small sample, put it in a bag, and then put that bag in the refrigerator. Dogs, I love you, but that love has boundaries. And one of those boundaries is this: puke when I can take the sample right then to the vet.