Who, me?
The subject of today's post is a little, how can I say, ahh, disgusting, so if you're squeamish about bodily functions and gross smells and sounds, you know, all the things that guys love and crack up over, you might want to go back to Facebook or wherever.
For those of you who follow my blog regularly (all several of you), my boon companion, best buddy and official canine of the All John All The Time World Church, of which I am the Popester, is a 13 year-old Golden Retriever and all around good guy, commonly and affectionately known as the Harley Dog (see picture above). Harley has been with me for seven years now, and he's more fun than a couple of midgets, a pogo stick and a pound of Parkay margarine. In the winter, we live together here in LA (pronounced LAH) and in the off-season months we fly off to the Sargasso Sea in the official atomic powered rocket ship of the Pope of the AJATTWC, the Royal Unionship Kidding, or RU Kidding for short, to our summer home on the island of Snacilbuper (pronounced SNACK-ILL-BUPER), which is Republicans backwards, (and which now that I think of it, is pretty much how most Republicans, and most Democrats for that matter, seem to do things these days), where we walk the beach, throw sticks, chase balls, belch and fart a lot and do a lot of other gross guy stuff.
As much fun as the Harley Dog is, and he can make me laugh like very few people I know, he does have his, how can I say, less than finer moments; he doesn't drool very much, but his breath could repulse an iguana, and he has a habit of licking areas on his big, furry self that I am unable to lick on myself, causing me a great deal of envy.
The worst thing about Harley is his occasional bouts of, okay, this is where it starts to get icky, flatulence. Its not often, at least the really bad stuff, but often enough, like say, once a week or so, when, all of a sudden, whoa, and tears start to come to my eyes, and the people downstairs from me start complaining, and sometimes the LAFD shows up, thinking there's a gas main leak somewhere; it gets pretty gritty, I gotta' tell you.
For the life of me I can't figure out what causes it; he eats the same, dry food every day, I NEVER give him table scraps because he already weighs a 100 pounds as it is, so unless gulping the air here in LA is the causative factor, I don't get it.
I rolled over in bed this morning, about 2:00am, a) because, like every night about that time, I had to pee, and b) my ENTIRE apartment was enveloped in this miasma, which was palpable, this ungodly smell, emanating from my dog's nether regions. It literally woke me up from a sound sleep. You'll pardon my being a little gross here, but the aroma was pungent, thick almost, like cheese that's gone bad or that wet towel you left in your gym bag at the bottom of your closet and forgot about until three months later. I mean, it was nasty. And although he doesn't say much, I always get the impression, like most guys after they've wafted a good one, that Harley is kind of smug and proud of himself.
Now, being a typical disgusting male pig person, I fart with some frequency, but I've noticed as I've gotten older that it's mostly just wind, and little aroma. I mean, on a good day I can toot the first eight bars of the "1812 Overture" but the paint stays on the walls and there's no lawsuits involved. Besides, it just the two of us, so who cares. (My Dad, like most Dads I suspect, had his little "fart ritual"; sitting in his chair in the living room, he'd lift up one cheek, let'er rip, and then look at my Mom and go, "Ooops, that slipped", which, of course, disgusted my mother to no end and cracked me up, both of which I'm sure my Dad thought were good reasons to continue doing it. As is so often the case, the acorn did not fall far from the tree.)
But not the Harley Dog, no tooting of classics for him; he is the embodiment of the old joke about being SBD: silent but deadly.
Harley came to live with me when I was well into my '50s, having spent the first six years of his life with my daughter; it's a long story of how he made the sojourn from the flatlands of Illinois to the sun-drenched San Fernando Valley, and I won't bore you with it, (now don't get all sentimental, he didn't run the whole way out here, he came in a cage in the cargo hold of an airplane) but Harley was my first, and only ever, pet. (Mom and Dad didn't know from pets.) So while I was intellectually aware that animals, particularly dogs, emit methane gas, but it's one thing to know about something, and it's another to experience it first hand, much like reading about an elephant in a book and then seeing one of those big bastards up close for the first time; it's just not the same. (Robert Heinlein, the famous science fiction writer, once remarked in one of his books that a mouse was as much of a biological miracle as an elephant, but didn't have near the visual impact.)
I had no idea how bad dog flatulence could be; I just never was exposed to it previously, so the first time Harley let loose, I was surprised, and I hate to say it, but again, being a typical "guy", I was a little impressed. I mean, all that odor from simple dry dog food, hey, one guy to another, that's a great job. I gave Harley a fist bump and we laughed our asses off. Once my eyes stopped tearing up. (I'll never forget the time, about a week after I got him, that he walked over to where I was sitting, looked me in the eye and yarked up everything he'd eaten that day, for no apparent reason, other than to baptize me and his new home, I guess. That was almost seven years ago, and he's never done it again since.)
Okay, enough gross-outs about dog farts; I promise tomorrow's post will deal with some subject that's a little more genteel, although at this point I have no idea what that subject will be. I have to close now; there's a committee of my neighbors at my front door and they want to talk to me about the horrendous odor emanating from my apartment. In the meantime, my partner is lying on the floor, with a smug look on his furry face; who me?
Love and eberts,
PJTT
copyright 2011 Krissongs, Inc.
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