My day so far (or my super sexy life)

Last night I was at Midori's super awesome hands on rope bondage class when I saw my phone ringing. In between watching a hot rope bondage demo and learning about different ropes, I ducked down behind the cunt wrap and checked my message. It was G, my friend and the person who walks the dogs when I work late. She wanted to know where the diarrhea medicine was. This is never a good message. And I happened to know that we were out of doggie diarrhea medicine. So I turned back to class and learned how to make a soft and comfy spreader bar out of 25 feet of rope. Brilliant.

I got home to find a note. Two of the three doglets were a little runny. Bella was farting in her kennel. Ok. Nothing I can't handle. In short order, the other two dogs demonstrated that their GI tracts were ok and we all went to bed.

I only had to get up three times in the night to take Bella out. Poor thing.

By morning it was clear that she was going to have to go to work with me, or I was going to have to stay home. There was no way she would be able to make it for more than three hours without a potty break.

So we went to work.

She quickly had an accident in the store. Lovely. But understandable. The store has a (polished) concrete floor. Bella spent three months living in an animal shelter and has yet to be convinced that the store is not, in fact, a large kennel. She doesn't work at the store often because she's still learning her manners, is easily freaked out by things that strangers wouldn't think were scary and responds to this by acting out inappropriately. And she's a pit bull. Which makes the inappropriate acting out scarier for customers than if she was, say, a Pomeranian. But it's Wednesday. The store isn't terribly busy on Wednesdays. And I didn't have any other good options.

In between bouts of diarrhea and deciding that the only place she felt comfortable was on my lap, she growled at a customer. Which meant that she was relegated to the back room as soon as anyone walked in the door. At around 5 a customer walked in and she got stiff. Which is dog for "I'm scared and trying to decide if I need to fight or run".

One of the things I've learned is important when you're working with a dog with issues is to listen to your gut. And my gut was telling me that I was putting a sick dog with emotional issues in a situation that she couldn't handle.

So I closed the store and took the girl home.

Yep, I closed the store because my dog's sick. I wouldn't have done it on a Saturday, or during our busy seasons, but today, I did. And it was the right thing to do. Because when she came home almost a year ago, I promised her I'd do my best. Besides, I'm responsible for everything she puts in her mouth. So it's likely that my choices have something to do with her current discomfort.

She's now cuddled in a ball in her kennel and ready for another dose of doggy homeopathic pepto bismol.

And I've been cuddled in a ball getting a ton of work done.

By the way - I'd suggest NOT feeding your dog a ton of treats that involve dehydrated chicken heart bits (even if it seems like a healthy tasty way to balance out the massive amount of treating involved in reactive dog training), on a day when they also demolish an "edible" beef flavored bone and you suddenly decide it's ok to let the dog eat a bunch of ends from the carrots you're chopping up for the carrot soup you're making. No matter how happy she seems doing all of the above. It may result in an unhappy dog later. And you may lose some sleep

Just sayin...