Don't Sleep With a Bubba

by Susan Reinhardt

  This was about when Stuart decided to get the Pomeranian, especially since Putt-Putt hated his guts and bit him every chance she got. Prior to our Pom’s being weaned and ready, I had Putt-Putt spayed and found her a loving home.

  Why people endure what pets do is beyond me. We love them so much, at least the good owners do, we spend our last dimes on their vet bills. And I can attest to doggy vet bills costing more than it did for me to have both my children combined. I kid you not.

  On a recent afternoon, close to quitting time at my workplace, members of WAG—Whining About Grossness—an informal dog owner’s support group, met up in the office hallway near the watercooler. We are several members strong and feel the great need to purge any and all disasters and destructive behaviors of our dogs.

  One of the members was concerned because her dog, Wesley, a mix of various fine breeds, won’t stop staring at her when she sits at the table.

  “He doesn’t even blink,” she said. “It’s the weirdest thing.”

  “He’s waiting for food,” I said.

  “No, he’s got food.”

  “Table food,” I said. “They’ll sit hours waiting for a single canned green bean. They hate their dog food. They’d rather eat rutabagas than a hefty mess of kibbles.”

  “Mine still eats poop,” another member said.

  “Well, at least that saves you on dog food bills,” someone offered.

  “To be so sweet, dogs can sure be nasty,” I said, and told them about the elegant luncheon I’d attended last fall, the women all dressed up and making polite conversation, when suddenly the hostess’s pedigreed pet got “The Fever” and engaged in an X-rated session with a giant throw pillow.

  “Conversation ceased,” I said, “and the women froze in horror, clutching their delicate wineglasses, wondering whether to guzzle booze or enjoy the show.”

  “Maybe they were getting some lessons to take home to their Viagra’d men,” the wittiest of our WAG bunch suggested.

  “That’s why you should have animals spayed and neutered,” a more practical WAGGER suggested.

  “That doesn’t stop their urges,” I said. “They’re like randy old men. They’ll run all over town making condolence calls. They still have the basic package. I mean, do all women with hysterectomies or men with vasectomies cease having urges? You do the math.”

  Everyone I know who owns a dog has a memory jammed with expensive anecdotes.

  My sister’s Chihuahua swallowed a baby-bottle nipple and had to have $900 worth of surgery. I considered myself lucky that our Putt-Putt, after eating Barbie’s hands and feet and a chunk of my husband’s leg, will simply throw it all up on the carpet.

  For the animal extremists who are offended by these tales, I’d like to point out that we love our furry demolition derby, the latest member of our family, the Pomeranian we named Zipper because he zips all over the house.

  We give our pride and joy two squares a day, vet care and, recently, had him neutered, trying to keep the population down as well as save on those embarrassing moments when the pooch takes great interest in a visitor’s leg. I will say it didn’t work and he humps his stuffed monkey every chance he can.

  After little Zipper’s pubic alterations, my then 4-year-old who’s now 8, saw the vet’s handiwork and decided the dog was now neither male nor female but a mixture of both.

  “Will he have to go to the bathroom twice as much now?” she asked, big eyes shining in wonder. All I could do, all any dog owner can do, is laugh. Otherwise we’d go insane.

  My latest incident with Zipper ended up causing a riot among a few readers who decided, once again, I must be the most evil and neglectful pet owner born on this planet.

  It all happened when I ran over him, just a wee tad.

  My poor, poor dog. First, the good news: he’s alive.

  Now the bad: he has no business being that way. Not after THREE brushes with death in a single day. It was all my fault, and I admitted as much to the PETA people. I even told them to look up my name in their files and see I was once a member and contributor and LOVE animals.

  It was simply one of those wild days when I was on the phone half the morning, working from my home office and enduring the type of conversation that leaves a girl rattled. Five minutes after hanging up, I backed out of the driveway and noticed the postman near the mailbox. I proceeded to the STOP sign and felt a slight thump-thump followed by an atmosphere-splitting noise.

  Jumping from the car, I raced to the middle of the road where Zipper, my black Pomeranian, yelped and yowled from the asphalt, his hindquarters unmoving.

  Pomeranians are known for their histrionics. They will act as if they are dying if someone so much as tries to clip their little toenails. Divas, they are.

  The mailman stopped inserting letters. “Did I run over him?” I asked.

  He nodded. I leaned over Zipper, who was by now moving both legs and trying to smile. That’s another thing about Pomeranians. They smile, honestly. I scooped him up gently and rushed him to the animal hospital where I cried and cried, just like I did after putting one of my hamsters to sleep. The dog panted and tried to squirm from my lap to investigate the premises, as dogs are wont to do.

  They called my name from the front counter. “Mrs. Reinhardt?”

  “I, uh, ran over my dog.” The staff and those in the waiting area gasped. “I only ran over him a tad.”

  They took him back to an exam room immediately, and the vet, a nice young man, said nothing appeared broken but ordered X-rays to make sure and to increase my total bill by several hundred dollars.

  Later that afternoon, my family picked up Zipper and called to report he was bruised but doing well. Lucky, considering. When I got home from work, I figured the dog was sore and I’d give him his pain pills.

  “Where’s Zipper’s medicine?” I asked, wanting to make up for my having run over him a wee tad by getting him stoned on some doggy narcotics.

  “Right on the counter,” a voice from upstairs yelled.

  I picked up a large bottle, quickly scanning the label. Bupropion. Hmm. Sounds like an opiate derivative to me. This is going to be one happy dog. I opened the bottle. Lord, what a huge pill—purple, too, like the kind I’d imagine Barney (the irritating TV dinosaur whose voice gives me hives and seizures) would take.

  For some strange reason, this pill looked familiar. I chopped it up and mixed it with some cheese. The dog gave me a weird look and ate the medicated snack, especially after I opened his maw, which he had clamped tighter than a clam shell, and stuffed the pill down his throat.

  And then, like a hammer over the head, it hit me. Oh, no. No, please, no. Don’t let this be true. “God help us all and don’t let this be what I think it is. Please. I’m begging, God. I’ll do good deeds for the rest of the month and won’t snarl or say a mean thing about anyone. I’ll visit shut-ins and make casseroles for old people. Well, maybe not. But I’ll at least cook something besides Tuna Helper for my family. I’ll buy the Heavenly Ham for my mother-in-law on Easter and not the cheap free one at the grocery store.”

  I checked the bottle again. It had MY name on it. Bupropion. SHIT!!!! I knew now what it was: the generic formula for Well-butrin. Oh, heavens, I’d given my dog an antidepressant often prescribed for people who want to quit smoking. Since I don’t smoke, I take it as a de-groucher. It’s supposed to make me more pleasant, but Mama says it isn’t working and I’m grumpier than ever. Like she has room to talk,
being a nearly 70-year-old woman still getting her period along with PMS.

  This couldn’t be good. A tiny dog cannot possibly survive 100 milligrams of Wellbutrin. I dialed four animal hospitals and a personal friend who’s a vet.

  “You WHAT?”

  “I gave the dog a Wellbutrin by mistake.”

  “How much does he weigh?”

  “About 12 pounds.”

  “You need to pour hydrogen peroxide down his throat until that pill comes up.”

  “Won’t that kill him?” I squealed.

  “No, but that pill will.”

  I called the neighbors across the street, the Parhams. Dr. John Parham is a physician at the Veteran’s Administration Medical Center, and I was sure he’d know what to do. In my right mind I would possess better reasoning…maybe. On second thought, my calling Dr. Parham was similar in nature to a pregnant woman calling a dentist to check her cervix.

  The dear man sent his sweet wife and daughter over with the peroxide and a dropper. We wrangled Zipper who was wilder than any rodeo animal and tried like the dickens to get the peroxide down him. We may have poured too much.

  I kept waiting for him to throw up and thus his life spared. Nothing. An hour passed. Nothing. Another hour, nothing. He walked the wood floors as if drunk and hit the furniture and would lie down and paw the air. I called the vet again.

  “It’s too late now. If he hasn’t died yet, maybe he won’t. Keep watching him and give us a call if anything changes.”

  In the end, my dog survived. But all I could think of was how I nearly killed him three times (if you include pouring peroxide down his throat) within an eight-hour period.

  Then a thought hit, the kind that always makes the guilty feel better. Rationalization. Maybe the Wellbutrin helped Zipper feel less depressed about getting a tad run over.

  And maybe, just maybe, he’ll never take up smoking.

  Ten Toddlers and Girls Gone Wild

  A s Lindsey grew older, reaching the normal childhood milestones, I soon learned she had inherited my temperament (not a great thing) and curiosity.

  I’ll never forget when she was about a year old, and we were at the Chick-fil-A counter ordering our food. Lindsey was in her stroller and had a bird’s-eye view of the counter’s underbelly. As I considered my chicken options, my daughter grew so quiet I almost forgot she was there.

  Rule No. 1 of parenting: When a child is quiet, NEVER, EVER relax. Those are the times something big is up.

  I looked down at this precious bundle of cherubic joy. Then my mouth dropped along with two bags of food.

  This stage in parenting is known as Motherly Mortification. My freshly scrubbed child had the brightest bluest lips I’d ever seen in my life. Electric Blue is what I’d call it if I was hired to choose Crayola names.

  I reached into her chomping neon mouth and she was smacking on a piece of bright blue, preowned bubble gum, compliments of the fine selection left by unmannerly past diners. Apparently, she’d discovered quite the mother lode beneath one of the restaurant’s tables, which were eye level with her stroller.

  I nearly died wondering who’d chewed the gum first, imagining a mouth with oozing boils and festering pustules. I yanked a baby wipe from the container in my bag and stuffed it into Lindsey’s mouth, cleaning like crazy as other frenzied parents stood nearby watching in utter fascination and probably thinking: “Who is this nut job sticking Huggies ass wipes in her daughter’s mouth?”

  After that, I decided that whatever she stuck in her mouth from the ground couldn’t do as much damage. That’s when the five-second rule came into play. If it hits the floor and you swoop it up within five seconds, it’s good to gobble.

  I figured this was much better than sucking carpet, which is exactly what a toddler did at my house during the year I joined a neighborhood babysitting co-op—translation: the one year I nearly pulled out every hair on my beady little head.

  The couple in charge, adorable preppies, required a background check on both me and my husband. This was not cheap, my dearies.

  When first asked to submit a police report to my own neighbors, I balked and decided I wasn’t going to cooperate. I was quite ashamed, having had a checkered past and quite the record. The whole burb would know I had a DWI back in the 80s and a few speeding tickets, along with a second-degree trespassing for one of those college protest things. Not to mention they would find out I took down a telephone pole with my Subaru one evening in 1989. And that I drove with an expired license and tag back in ’95 and protested a proposed rock quarry in college and landed in jail.

  I always thought that after seven years, the slate was wiped clean. But it wasn’t. Every little crime was there in black and white. In the end I paid the $60 bucks for the report, and as I handed over my tarnished record I turned six shades of red.

  I prayed they wouldn’t read it too closely—And they must not have because—the next Saturday night the doorbell rang and the babies and tots arrived. Moms and dads had big plans and I had big fears.

  All in all, though, I thought, it went fairly well. To keep them entertained I popped in Raising Arizona , and popped corn, too. How was I to know what that movie was about?

  My turn rolled around twice during that year.

  Frankly, I’m surprised the parents even brought them after what happened last time. Then I realized it was close to Christmas and they were desperate to get in some last minute shopping, hobnobbing and eggnogging. They figured I had a pulse and respirations so I had to be a better sitter than their yellow labs were.

  The doorbell began ringing.

  “Hi there. Can you say hi to Ms. Reinhardt?” my dear friend Norm Lizarralde asked his two cherubs. Both boys, cute as speckled pups, tore out of their parents’ arms and headed for the raw cookie dough in the kitchen.

  “We won’t be gone long,” they said, and smiled, thrusting diaper bags and cell phone numbers into my hands. “Just be sure not to show them Raising Arizona again,” Norm said, laughing.

  “Yes…well…er…right. Sorry, Norm. I didn’t realize it was PG-13. Tonight we’re watching Bad Santa , with Billy Bob Thornton, but don’t you worry, it doesn’t even have a rating.”

  His face lost color.

  “Just kidding. You and Julie go have some fun. We’ll be fine. I passed the background check, remember? Hey, I was young and foolish,” I said. “I’m not a pedophile. That ought to score some major points.” Oops. Wrong subject.

  Half an hour later my house was rocking with the Ten Toddlers and their squeals.

  My son heard the raucous and scurried downstairs.

  “I’ll give you $5 an hour to help me out here,” I said.

  “No way. Ten plus extra if some are really awful.”

  I was desperate, “OK. Mr. Extortion.”

  Boy, tell a 13-year-old to pitch in during Romper Room Gone Wild is like asking him to tell a girl her hair is beautiful or actually dance at a school dance instead of standing around the snack bar and ordering M&M’s and Sierra Mist.

  He jumped right into his role as Toddler Teen Patrol. “Listen up, kids,” he shouted. “I need you to all calm down and shut up.”

  “You can’t tell them to shut up. They’re babies.”

  All was going OK until I noticed one of the children wo
uldn’t stop “nursing” the carpet downstairs. I realized it was old, but I never knew it could offer such sustenance. I tried everything possible to pry the neighbor’s toddler from the fibers, but every time I attempted moving him, he screamed and kicked those mad baby feet.

  “That one boy won’t stop gnawing on the rug, Mom.”

  “Tell the others not to step on him. I guess that must be the spot where you spilled your hot chocolate last week.”

  I put on some G-rated movies and soothing music, but the Ten Toddlers were much more interested in jumping from one sofa to the other and faking various injuries.

  Eventually it was almost time for them to head home and no one was hurt and the carpet sucker had fallen asleep in the wet spot he created. I was certain they’d give good reports to their parents.

  “Mith Whinhart ith thow nithe,” they’d say. “She gave uth cookies.”

  As the parents came to pick them up, I smiled like a much nicer and younger Martha Stewart. “Oh,” I said. “It was such fun. They were all precious.” Lies. White lies. The kind that don’t land you in hell, according to Mama.

  The carpet muncher’s mom took her baby in her arms and stared for a long time at his face. “What’s that gray fur sticking out of your brother’s teeth?” I heard the mom ask her little girl as they headed out the door.

  I ducked into the kitchen and pretended to round up diaper bags.

  Two months later, I resigned from the Neighborhood Coop Babysitting Club. I think a lot of parents are quite relieved. I know I am.

  This whole experience prepared me for the wildest party I’d seen in years: my daughter’s “Friendship Party.” They might call this episode of first-grader fun the “Little Girls Gone Wild.”

  The sound was like walking into a gymnasium full of cheerleaders. At best. At worst, it was like falling into a stall crammed with squealing little pigs. And at times, it became a tangle of wildcats fighting at sundown.