The Dog-Owner's Plight - Canine Flatulence

Those of us who own dogs - especially larger ones - know the perils of canine flatulence. Usually of the SBD type, they are an unsuspected affront to a person's tender olfactories, often coming at the most inopportune times. In the middle of a meal, say, or perhaps at the start of an amorous encounter. Their timing? Impeccable. Their ability to clear a room? Indisputed.

In other words, we should know better. Yet we still persist in allowing them to live with us, side-by-side, on our couches, in our beds. Tales, myths and legends on this topic abound. This is one such story.

One recent early morn, in that quiet hour when silence lays over the land like a heavy cloak, I was abed deep in slumber. Claire, our boxer, nestled in her bean-like shape between us in the vast expanse of our king-sized bed. Somehow at the same time curled into the tightest little dog-ball possible yet taking up nearly the entire surface of the mattress.

During the night, she had managed to shift around so her hindquarters were mere inches from my face. Literally so close that her fine, short hairs should have been tickling my broad pate. Unaware of such danger, I dreamed on, head filled with visions of myself scoring game-winning soccer goals, nubile yet nebulous female forms and deep dish pizza. That blissful slumber was soon to be interrupted however, by a sound nearly as quiet of that of a small mouse scurrying across a kitchen carpet.

***psssssssssst***

From the deepest reaches of REM sleep to the equivalent of being slapped awake by a rotten herring, my head snapped back so hard I heard vertebrae pop. So quick and violent was my reaction that the back of my head struck the headboard with a BANG! The stench. Oh my god. Oh. My. God.

It was awful and at the same time awe inspiring. It was as if someone had put my face in front of the tailpipe of a spavined 1971 Buick with a 442, having poured rancid beef gravy directly into the four-barrel carb and gunned the engine. My nose hairs, trimmed and manscaped as they are, curled into tight circles like fiddlehead ferns just before turning to fine ash.

Spasming with effort to extract myself from the blankets to get as far away - as far, far away - as I possibly could from the viscous black cloud spreading from the general area of the dog's rump, I was entangled, hips to feet. I tumbled from the bed to the floor, still wrapped in linens. I immediately began dragging myself to the bathroom door, the entire time gagging, holding back the previous night's dinner with a loud "yurk-yurk-yurk", unable to yell for my wife to flee. To hold her nose and run as far away as possible. To keep running until she reached the back yard and the safety of outdoor air. I crawled with every intention of pulling myself to the vanity and spraying at least three spritzes of cologne up each nostril, anything to eliminate the oily horror crawling up my sinuses.

As the air below bed level contained less than 1,000 PPM of dog expulsion, my head began to clear and I was able to finally extract myself from the covers. I shakily lifted myself off the floor and looked to the bed, where Claire the boxer lay, now in my spot, head on my pillow looking at me with the dog equivalent of "What?"

Awake, full of adrenaline and embarrassment, I gave up on sleep for the night and went downstairs to make coffee. At least knowing that, down there, the only effluvient I needed to concern myself with was of my own creation.

The moral of this story? Don't put too much peanut butter in your dog's Kong toy to distract them before leaving them crated prior to an evening out. They will punish you for it in oh so many ways. Fairly thee be warned.