Oliver? Lovely? Ha!

Heather at 2 Brits, 2 Yanks and 2 Dogs presented my two dogs me with the Lovely blog award. Thank you Heather! Now, let me take a moment to tell you what is not so lovely about my dogs. In addition to being cute and huge and lovable and huge and protective and huge and ever-loving, my dogs are big and messy and big and dirty and big and gross. Get it? My dogs are large and a lot of work. They eat about 10 pounds of dog food every 3 or 4 days, and because Oliver has a sensitive stomach we are forced to buy the expensive dog food in huge 40 pound bags 2 at a time. I'll give you one guess as to who's job it is to hoist the heavy bags into the trunk of the car. Once the food gets to the bowl or in our case the biggest dog food tower we could find at the pet store, mounted to a step stool so Oliver doesn't have to bend all the way down to the floor to eat. Did I mention that Oliver is 140 pounds? Surprisingly he's not overweight at all, just a big 'ol Saint Bernard. Once Oliver eats his fill, poor Doopie (his name is Rocko but the kids call him Doopie and it just stuck) gets whatever slimy dog food balls are left. Just being in the same room as the 2 of them while they eat is so disgusting. The smell, the sounds, the drooling. That's why they have their own room. We just call it the dog room but it's actually the back entry where we keep our shoes. Thank goodness their shoe eating days are over.

Most of their day (roughly 20 hours) is spent lounging around the house or lying in the grass outside. They get up walk around, maybe chase the tennis ball around, then back to sleep. Oliver's favorite part of the day is dinnertime. He loves to help me cook and by help I mean he'll stand right next to me with his big nose up on the counter to get a whiff of what I'm cooking. Any time bacon is involved he stands between the stove and the fridge (right in the middle of my work triangle with the rest of the helpers begging for a pre-dinner tasting).

He has never had any interest in vegetables other than corn on the cob (which we don't eat anymore after watching King Corn and living next to farm fields for the last several years), he will dig through the garbage for the cob and eat it like a bone. Gone in about 3 minutes and again in the yard about an hour later when it doesn't agree with him.

Which brings me to the next not so lovely characteristic of my dogs, they eat the weirdest shit and yes that includes actual shit. Goat was their favorite but now that Binny can tolerate cow milk, we no longer have the goats and their super yummy round chocolate colored treats. I was constantly having to chase Rocko out of the goat yard.

Oliver once ate an entire summer's worth of lawnmower underside clippings when he was staying with my in-laws for the weekend. When we brought him home that Sunday night, he spent the entire evening puking and shitting all over my basement (the dog room at that house). It was to the point that I called the emergency vet hotline in the middle of the night. Turns out he was fine, just needed to get it out of his system.

And speaking of evacuating his system, Oliver has always had a bit of an incontinence issue. When he was 9 months old, he was diagnosed with hip dysplasia and we think that he can't always feel the urge until it's too late. It doesn't happen too often anymore but when it does watch out. We have learned not to chase him out of the house mid-pee because he also can't turn the valve off, and would zig-zag pee all the way out the door. Now when something like this happens he tries to stand on a rug right in front of the door to catch the pee and also if he pees on a fluffy surface it doesn't splash back on his legs. I much prefer the rug method, because I can just throw it into the wash. Still gross but better than writing his name across my floor.

So now that I've described the not so lovely side of my dogs, it your turn. That's right I'm passing this Lovely award on to other bloggers who have had their homes taken over by four legged creatures.

In no particular order:

Skyewriter and her cat Emma
True Blue Texan and her 3 dogs (I know she's got a story or two to tell)
Funnyrunner and her dog Sophie
Kelly (I think she has a dog)
Leigh and her naughty dogs
and anyone else I missed.