I let the dog back in

OK..............there's a backstory here. When my sons and I arrived home tonight around 7:45 p.m. following my oldest son's soccer game, we were greeted by the stench and sight of dog poop all over our basement carpet. I haven't written about it here, but our dog has lung cancer. He was diagnosed about 7 weeks ago. He also has spinal arthritis and recently it is becoming increasingly difficult for him to stand up by himself. He is a nearly 80 pound dog. I usually come home on my lunch break to let him out because the medicine he is on causes him to eat and drink a lot and, therefore, pee and poop a lot. And I did come home to let him out today. However, he had to wait a longer time than usual to be let out again because my son had soccer pictures and had to be at practice early, my husband is out of town, and I had to get my son at his school (which my DH usually does) which is about 1 1/2 hour round trip for me. Anywho.........that's what greeted me when I arrived home with the 2 boys. Trying to stay calm, I had the boys go straight upstairs and asked them to stay there while I dealt with the "situation" downstairs. My first goal was to get the dog outside. He was getting poop all over his rear end trying to stand up and then smearing it further into the carpet. So..........I dragged/carried him out and started to deal with THE MESS. In the meantime I called my mom and explained what was going on. It was soon evident that my carpet spray and rags were not going to sufficiently clean our carpet. So my mom (bless her heart!) stopped at our local grocery store, rented a Rug Doctor and brought it out to our house. She hung around and helped get the boys in bed and also stayed most of the time that I cleaned the carpets. Before she arrived with the Rug Doctor I had pretty much decided that the dog was going to stay in the garage all night. I am not physically able to bathe him by myself nor do I have any place downstairs to bathe an 80 pound dog. And I didn't want him tracking more poop in the house, getting on the wet, newly cleaned carpet, etc. My mom totally agreed with this plan. (She has never had indoor pets.) In the meantime, my husband called me from New Orleans (he flew there this AM for a conference) and I relayed to him what had happened and what I planned to do. He was not pleased about my plan to keep the dog in the garage. He was worried about how upsetting that would be to the dog, etc. And I admit that I WAS feeling guilty about leaving the dog in the garage too. I told him I would probably let the dog back in after I got the carpets cleaned.

After I cleaned the whole basement with the Rug Doctor, I tried to reach my husband in his hotel room to report my progress. I was pretty proud of myself for cleaning the whole basement, not just the yucky places. However, I couldn't reach him. I left him two messages within about 15 minutes.......something along the lines of, "Hey, party boy........it must be nice to be out on the town in New Orleans while I'm up here getting $%&* out of the carpet......" (that looks worse in writing than how I said it; I was kind of jokey about it). It wasn't long before he called me back. When I answered he said, "Hey, pooper scooper!" And luckily I have a good enough sense of humor to think that was funny! Anyway, the upshot of our last conversation is that I decided to let the dog back in the house. My husband convinced me to go outside with a wet soapy rag and try to clean any remaining excrement from the dog before letting him back in. I DID ask him how he proposed I clean poop off a black dog at 10:00 at night outside, but he seemed confident that I could do it. So, people, I did go outside to scrub the dried poop off my sick dog before letting him back in the house.

Before I let the dog back in I was washing our dishes (Flylady would be so happy!) and thinking about what, if any, spiritual lesson could be gleaned from my poopy evening. And suddenly the lesson seemed very obvious to me. As you recall, my initial reaction to finding the poop was to get the dog out of the house and not let him back in. Essentially, I was throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. I was immediately humbled as I realized that the God I believe in would never do that to any of His children. Regardless of the "dirt" we create, God is ready to forgive us and welcome us back with open arms. He loves us unconditionally despite the ugly stains we leave as a result of our sinful actions. Like my oldest son said when I put him to bed tonight, "We shouldn't just remember that Jesus died for us on Easter; we should remember it EVERY day of the year." Couldn't have said it better myself. And I let the dog back in.

Here's a photo of the Rug Doctor I rented. (Every post needs a photo, dontcha think?) Just be glad I didn't take a photo of the pile that caused me to rent the Rug Doctor! And to be honest, I kind of thought about it. If you write a blog, you totally understand why I would think about it..........I knew it would make a good blog post. But.......since this is a nice clean family kinda blog..........no poo-poo pictures. Just the good ol' Rent-A-Kent.