I was working from home on Tues. and decided to give Buckwheat a bath. He was so incredibly stinky– smelled like he was rotting from the inside (and he probably was).  I didn’t have dog shampoo, so created a mixture of Apple Cider vinegar, a teaspoon of lemon, some olive oil, and a huge bucket of water. I gave him a sponge bath on the porch.

Later in the day, I told Storm that she can move inside when Buckwheat was gone.

When Greg came home, we went for our evening walk with the inside dogs. I noticed Buckwheat just wasn’t doing well. I said to Greg, “I think it’s almost time for the Buck-a-r00.” Immediately after my comment,  Buckwheat collapsed. Greg carried him home.  Indeed the time had come.

We usually have our dogs euthanized at home because it’s more peaceful and less stressful for the dog and ourselves.  I was unable to get a hold of our house-call vet. I drove Buckwheat into town to the After Hours Clinic. After filling out the paperwork, Buckwheat and I sat on the floor of the emergency room. I was waiting for the usual doc to come in, and I was very pleasantly surprised to see that the doc on call was my old (not in age) vet, Dr. Pinto!!!! Pinto had moved away years ago and had happened to be in town for the week and thought she’d work a couple of shifts at the clinic.  She had euthanized several of my dogs before she moved away. I couldn’t have asked for anyone else (except for Dr. Rose) to be the vet doing the deed.

The euth went smoothly. I told Buckwheat to say hi to his brothers (Levi & Bandit) and sister (Darla). I feel a little guilty not getting Buckwheat back in a little box; I opted for a group cremation.

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As a side note, the pink stuff that they use to euth animals is Beuthanasia and the blue stuff is Fatal Plus. I was trying to think of the names because Pinto used the pink stuff and I was used to seeing the blue stuff.

Today, around 2am I was awakened by an overwhelming smell of poop. My first thought was that Buckwheat must have pooped on his bed made of old blankets which is located right next to our bed. I turned on the light to find that Buckwheat wasn’t in the room. Chez was sleeping on Buckwheat’s bed.

As a side note, Buckwheat is around 112 years old and has been losing bowel control. He often leaves a present and doesn’t even know it.

Back to the story…

I went into the office room to see if the Buckster left me a present. Nope, it didn’t smell like shit in there. I went back to the bedroom in search of the cause of the foul smell.  I around looked for a frozen poopsicle that someone may have brought in through the dog door. I didn’t see anything. The smell was truly overpowering. I though maybe Bruno was having bad gas, and sniffed his bum. Nope. It wasn’t Bruno. Neptune’s tumbly had been growling, so I sniffed his bum. Yuk. Neptune smelled like shit. But wait, I looked at the bed and there was a brown turd sleeping next to me. Geez. Gross. Nasty. Barf. How could this happen?? Neptune wouldn’t shit in the bed? Would he? How come I didn’t smell it until now? Where did it come from. Help. I’m sleeping next to crap.

Okay. I got a hold of myself and began to clean up. I pushed all of the dogs off of the bed, pulled the sheets off, brought the nasty ones outside, and put new sheets and blankets on the bed. I walked by the office room to find that in all of the excitement, Buckwheat left me a warm present. I cleaned this up and was ready to get back into bed, but it occurred to me that both Neptune and I were sleeping on a turd. I began to sniff Neptune, and sure enough, he smelled like shit. I escorted him into the bathroom and began to clean the parts that smelled bad. It wasn’t working. I put him in the shower. At first he was whining, but then realized that he was going to get to take a shower with me, so he didn’t mind. I washed the both of us and then used the hair dryer to dry Neptune off because I didn’t want a wet dog to jump into bed.

By now it was 2:30am and I felt compelled to call Greg, who was in Texas, and tell him the news. He didn’t seem to mind being woken up at 5:30am to hear about shit in the bed. It’s not the first time we’ve been woken up do to some type of excretion.

We all went back to sleep. But the question remains, who shat in the bed? The suspects are Neptune, Bruno, Scully, Chez, Sam, Chester, Sugar, Buckwheat, and Ilana. We were all in the bed at sometime during the night.

• Sugar was sleeping just outside of the bedroom– in a location where she normally doesn’t hang out. Could she have been in the bed just before I went to sleep?
• Earlier in the evening, there was a turd in the hallway, which I suspect was from Buckwheat. It wasn’t a full turd though. Could Buckwheat have been in the bed, shat in the bed, and then leave additional stuff in the hall? But why didn’t I smell the shit when I first got into bed?
• Chester was in bed, right before I climbed in, and Scully was in be right before Chester.
• Sam and Bruno were in there usual spots, curled up on top of me.
• Chez was on Buckwheat’s bed, but could have been on the bed earlier in the evening.
• Neptune was sleeping right next to me.
• Ilana sometimes dreams that she has to take a dump. Could she have shat in the bed while dreaming about taking a dump?

Who do you think shat in the bed? You can take the poll on the right of this page to voice your opinion.

Bosco/Dudley: We came home a few weeks ago to find a big gash on Bosco’s back. At first we thought that Wild, the evil-creature-dog-from-hell, fought with Bosco. I scolded her and told her how evil she was. But then I noticed that Dudley had a small scratch and blood spot on the area surrounding his right eye. Could Bosco and Dudley have been fighting? It’s possible, Dudley is afraid of Bosco and Bosco growls at Dudley, however, Dudley doesn’t have any teeth.

We decided that we’d tend to Bosco’s wounds ourselves– clean the wound and give him some antibiotics. This was a bad move. Bosco’s cut got totally infected. Green oozing gobs of pus were leaking from his wound and the infection burrowed through at least two inches of skin. We took Bosco to the vet and he was put on very strong antibiotics and the vet cut out the infection– which was a good chunk of his back. He’ll be okay.

Scully: Scully got her ass kicked by Monkey and the Monkey Gang (Pumpkin, Chez, and whoever else). It was a horrible fight. For the last year we’ve been having puppy parties where everyone runs around and gets along– but not this night. Monkey was trying to fight with everyone and eventually Scully was her target. Scully ended up with a 5 inch skin avulsion on her neck, a ripped anus, and miscellaneous punctures and tears all over her body. We’ve been keeping her inside for her recovery and she is working out to be a great pet.

Magic: Magic got beat up by Chez and some other StinkyPups. He’s okay, but he got to spend a couple of days inside due to an injured leg.

Buckwheat: Bucky is an old pup– around 12. He hasn’t been pulling that well this year, but that’s okay because I’ve been taking the geriatric team out for short 4 – 7 mile runs, 1 – 2 times a week. We were on a 7 mile run and Bucky collapsed. We were just trotting along and he fell on his side. I stopped the sled and helped him up. He seemed okay. I knew he didn’t want to ride in the sled so I left him hooked up and we went home at an extremely slow pace. Buckwheat is now officially a retired sled dogs and has taken up residence with us. His status has changed to “Pet” dog– which is fine by us, however, he is extremely stinky and pees on everything in the house.

Besides all of the fighting (I didn’t mention all of the little fights), mushing has been going well. It’s finally getting cool enough to run.

Today’s plan was to mush from home to Valley Center (arond 12.5 miles). Mush the 32 mile Hamburger Quest from Valley Center to Angle Creek. Camp out at Angle Creek for 4 hours and let the dogs rest. And then mush home.

What Actually Happened

I left home with 10 stinkypups (Levi, Duke, Darla, Buckwheat, Storm, Stubby, Magic, Pumpkin, Monkey-Tail, and Higgs). I’ve never mushed to Valley Center before, so I turned left too early, ended up going in a square a couple of times, and then cut through someones dog yard. Unfortunately, I ended up on Chena Hot Springs Road– yes the road! I couldn’t stop the sled because there wasn’t any snow to hook into and I couldn’t get my leaders Duke and Levi to gee (turn right) onto the snow burm. They decided it would be fun to run on the left hand side of the road. Luckily, a nice man stopped and helped to get my dogs over to the side of the road!!

When I arrived at Valley Center I thought that I had missed the start of the race. As it turns out, the race marshall decided to postpone the race from 11am to 12pm (because it was to cold??!?).

Greg was waiting for me at Valley Center. We souped the dogs and switched Storm and Magic with Bandit and Sugar. We waited 1.5 hours and then it was time to go. So, I’m trying to get to the race start and Greg is trying to hold the team back because he didn’t think it was my turn to go. I explained to him that they were waving me on and not the team in front of me. He let go of the sled and off I went.

Almost immediately after I started the race I needed to stop the team and readjust dogs. Duke didn’t have his tugline attached. Monkey was tangled. Levi wanted to poop, and then I was passed by musher #15. After I got the tangles sorted out we crossed the road at mile 27 and were on our way to Angle Creek. We had a few more tangles and a couple of other teams pass us, but for the most part the trip was uneventful. The only event that occured was I had to hold Monkey-tail’s harness clip in my hand to melt the ice-poop off (I needed to undo her clip and it was frozen with poop).

After three hours and twenty four minutes I arrived at Angle Creek. The team was still going strong (slow, but strong) and we were all psyched to finally be at the finish line. We had expected to see our handler, Greg, waiting for us with hot soup and straw, however, Greg wasn’t around. I was greeted by my neighbor Maureen. She asked if I was still going to mush back and I said I wasn’t sure, I’ll check in with Greg to discuss. She said she hadn’t seen him. We both thought that Greg not being there was weird.

Maureen and Scott were kind enough to hook up their tie outs and put my dogs on the tie outs. Allan and his kids offered soup (his girls even souped the dogs for me!). I had lots of help from everyone but Greg.

By then I had decided that I wouldn’t mush home. The dogs already were away from their intended rest spot, there wasn’t any straw for them to nap on, their booties and harnesses were off, etc. I decided to take Maureen up on her offer for her to bring my dogs home in her dog truck.

Eventually Greg showed up. He had forgotten the dog food and had to turn around 1/2 hour into his road trip.

We drove home and met Maureen and Scott at our house. Unpacked the dogs and fed them, and then all of the stinkypups took a long nap.