retarded animal baby and the insidous shit

Sean's chihuahua Maqz is small enough that, even as an adult dog, he can use those dog-training pee pads to do his business. Sean has such a pad tucked away inside the closet where his stand-up washer/dryer combo lives. The closet's sliding doors are left open, exposing the washer/dryer and leaving a small space for the dog to creep inside, do his thing in the dark, then walk back out. I then come along, smell the fresh pidudi, and change the pad.

But despite the pee pad's fairly large size—about four square feet—Maqz often misses his target, and then it's up to me to clean up les dégâts. Today, Maqz gave me a double-whammy: he shat on the rectangular shower mat (which doubtless looks like a pee pad from his perspective), and he also left little, slug-sized pieces of wet shit next to the pee pad and on Sean's hardwood floor, in front of the washer/dryer. So I gamely picked up the crap from the bathroom mat, using toilet paper to gently lift the logs off the cloth. I then sat myself down by the washer/dryer, got out the roll of paper towels and the cleaning spray, and did what I could to remove those awful, glistening dung-slugs, parts of which had dripped between the hardwood boards. Alas, the wood still has slug-shaped stains on it, but I did my best.

In mentally tracking Maqz's shit since my arrival Thursday night, I've noticed that it's been shrinking. Big poop is better poop, in my opinion: it's both dryer and easier to pick up and dispose of. Little poop, meanwhile, is insidious: wet, noisome, and filled with malice. I suppose the best analogy I can think of is scorpions: the smaller a scorpion is, the deadlier.

That meditation led me to thinking about what it means to have and care for a dog, and I'm now convinced that having a dog is a lot like having a severely retarded kid. Such kids mean well, and they have hearts of gold, but they also have trouble learning from their experiences and think nothing of shitting all over the place. Pretty awful. But see, it's the heart-of-gold thing that compensates for all the bad points. Of course it's worthwhile to own a dog, just as a mother would never jettison her mentally challenged child. A dog is an animal, from the Latin root anima, which means mind or soul. A dog is an ensouled thing, a zöon, a living being, a member of the Buddhist joong-saeng (roughly, all creatures that have life and breath). It has emotions and intelligence and is motivated by curiosity, thanks to the blessing and curse of its amazing nose. It's also gifted with a loyal heart and a wonderful sense of play. So what if it shits and drools all over the place? Forget severely retarded kids—babies do the same thing! And they're worth it, right?

...right?


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