Dogsitting 101

A few months ago my sister and her family packed up for a big vacation over to Missouri to see some of her husbands family. They couldn't take their dog, and had just planned on leaving him at their place and have some friends check in on him daily. I was like, 'Oh that's silly...just bring him here and we'll watch him.' Uggghhh. I'm such a moron sometimes.

Finley the dog is a big time country dog. My sister lives on 5 acres, and surrounding that five acres is just more and more acres. Finley is used to running wild and free...and he's used to the attention of my sisters' 7 kids. I live in town, on a tiny lot, surrounded by other houses where dogs are either fenced in or on leashes...and I have 1 kid. We don't have a fence, so to keep him from running off...which he wanted to do badly...we had to keep him tied to the trampoline or stuck inside my house...where it became evident on my new floors that he is a constant drooler.

The very first thing he did when he got here was wander into my backyard and plant the largest, and unfortunately softest, dookie I have every seen in my entire life. I think he was nervous about his family leaving or something because he emptied the entire contents of his lower intestine onto my lawn. It was about the size of a large serving platter...not a regular plate...a serving platter...and about 8 inches high. I honestly had no idea a dog could have that much poop in him at any one time. Sorry...but it was amazing. Anyway, I paid Andrew 5 bucks to clean it up because there was no way I was going to be able to do it without losing my cookies. Andrew will do just about anything for money...but when he started dry-heaving about halfway through the job, I think he realized he got the raw end of the deal.

The first day we had him, I think Andrew took that stupid dog on about 27 walks. The novelty of having a dog! We took the dog over to one of the parks in the neighborhood that has a little hill we sled on in the winter, and Finley started running down it. Andrew held onto his leash for dear life...then he tripped...and kept holding on as Finley drug him down the hill at a full run. It was classic.

Aside from the poop, Andrew had a lot of fun with Finley. Andrew's best friend has a beagle, so the boys had a great time walking the dogs together.



Finley is a ridiculously sweet dog but I wore out fast. My new floors were covered in dog hair and drool. When he was outside he had to be chained to the trampoline as we don't have a tree in the back. If you've ever chained a stupid dog to a trampoline you know that they are constantly getting tangled in the many trampoline legs. To let us know that he didn't like being chained he was more than happy to share his annoying high pitched squeaky style bark...nonstop.

On day 3, we were all going a little stir crazy. For Andrew, the novelty of entertaining Finley was starting to wear off, and poor Finley was feeling cramped in town. So we packed up in the car, and drove up to Rock Creek for some fishing and swimming. It was glorious. The only snafu was when the dog decided to swim directly into our friends' fishing lure and get his leg hooked. He was oblivious though. I don't think he felt it because he just wanted to keep swimming.



The original plan was to dogsit for a week and then take him up to the lake and let my mom watch him the following week, after which my sister and other siblings would be showing up at the lake for a family reunion which I'll get to in another post. I couldn't last another minute. So, four days into it, I grabbed Andrew and his friend Ben and Finley and we headed up to Flathead. We spent the day swimming, canoeing and visiting with my parents and then I quite happily went home dogless. That silly dog loved being at the lake...no barking problems...no running away problems...and my parents have no idea where he was pooping because they have yet to find so much as a pebble.