Dog Sitting

My housemate went off to the Cape today and asked me to take care of his dog; I love dogs and animals in general so I happily agreed. I had an Irish Setter and then a Basset Hound growing up, but I'd forgotten how much attention they require. What follows is a log of my time with Simba so far.
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- Last night, housemate went to a Red Sox game and suggested Sim might like it if I took her for a walk. I took her around the block at 10:30 or so and somehow figured that she wouldn't poop. Naturally, she pooped and I didn't have a bag, so I committed a crime against humanity and left it on the sidewalk, a block and a half from our house.

- Wake up this morning and take her out in the yard to see if she has to pee. Nothing really. Mike calls in the early afternoon and explains her feeding schedule. I feed her and take her for a walk, this time equipped with a poop bag. She poops in the same spot as last night, but last night's poop seems to be gone, so I can't get my Poop Karma back by retrieving the previous digger.

- Back at the house I work for a couple hours and Simba wants to play. She brings over the big green stuffed bone with dual squeakers. We play fetch for a while.

- Couple more hours of work and then it's time for a quick jaunt to the beach to get her tired. Not having much gas in the tank and wanting to get back to finish up work, I head for Newcastle beach. I go over the bridges to Newcastle and realize I don't know where the beach actually is. I had seen the sign for the Fort and housemate's girlfriend had spoken of taking Simba there. I eventually head there and then see the sign that they close at 4pm.

- The "no gas" light hasn't come on in my car yet, so I decide to head for the closest beach in Rye. Simba quickly pees outside my car and a guy watching the sunset seems to grumble. I have her on the leash and she beelines for the line where the wet and dry sand meet and quickly takes a big poop. I scooped it up in the bag I had brought. On the one hand, I was happy to get the pooping out of the way so we could play on the beach. On the other, I realized there was no trash around and I had to carry the bag around with me for the rest of the time.

- Down the beach a bit, a golden retrieverish puppy is playing with it's captors. They come over for introductions. I tell them that Simba is hit or miss with other dogs and to proceed with caution. It was my first experience of meeting other people solely based on the fact that we both have dogs. We probably wouldn't have given each other the time of day otherwise. The dogs get on fine enough and we part ways after they sniff each other's butts and we talk about how old they are and how many other dogs they'd met and all that.

- Having passed the "I'm not going to kill the other dog on the beach test", Simba is allowed off the leash. She darts off like a greyhound and pretends not to hear me when I call her back. She stops for a moment to poop again. Having only brought one bag, I'm dismayed. Would a hardcore poop collector somehow untie the bag and scoop up the second poop along with the first? When I was a kid, dogs pooped everywhere and nobody picked them up and we liked it. There were poops turned white baking in the sun on every patch of grass. I decided to do the old cover it with sand trick and hope a big wave washed it away before an innocent bystander sat in it.

- Simba continues running on and ignoring me, scaring me to death that she will run out into the street and be killed or maimed, not only devasting me and the owner, but also exposing me as an inadequate dogsitter. "You never take a dog off the leash the first time!" I could hear every dogowner screaming at me. She stopped for a third poop and I nabbed her by the collar and reattached her leash and kicked some more sand on her latest creation.

- We walk all over the beach and she poops twice more. I'm convinced at this point the bad karma from leaving the poop in my neighborhood the night before is catching up with me. What does a hardcore poop cleaner-up do in this scenario?

- Eventually, we head back to the car and go home. She drinks lots of water and goes off for a nap.

- Around 11, I take her for another walk around the block. Fortunately, she passes the scene of the previous night's crime and we make it home without incident. I feed her and make myself a snack and she watches with sad eyes as I eat my food.

All that being said was only to show how much effort goes into taking care of a dog. It has been a great pleasure to be her provider today and her excitement every time we do something together is truly uplifting. I can't wait for my own.