In the past few months, I've taken a second job as a carpet cleaner. I can see readers stopping here, scratching their heads, frowning, and saying to their spouses, "Wow. This guy actually thinks of his humor column as a real job!" But it's true.
I don't actually get paid for cleaning carpets, but at least a couple times a week, I drag out the industrial-strength carpet cleaner (we bought at a discount store) and do the rugs in our house. I have to do this because our dog Harry — a, decrepit, smelly Westie of extremely advanced years — is now unable to hear or see, let alone play fetch, and just wanders the house like a drunken sailor looking for the men's room. And much like a drunken sailor, he gives up and simply pees on the floor whenever the mood strikes him, which he seems to do quite regularly.
We don't actually see it happen often, but we know it is happening because in warm weather, our house smells like the New York City subway during a heat wave. When I come down in the morning for coffee, I walk around the entire first floor barefoot before my first cup of Joe. It sounds gross, but it's the quickest way to find out whether someone has peed on your rugs.
As a disclaimer, I've never really liked Harry at that much. When he was younger and able to decide who he wanted to be with, he decided that he loved my wife and wasn't so crazy about me. He'd follow her around like a small, furry shadow. And once in a while, he would glare at me when I got too close to his girl. But now that my old nemesis is so old that he can't see or hear much, and his big decision is whether to lie down on his left side or right side, I can't really be upset with him. If I live long enough to sleep all day, shuffle into walls and occasionally go where no man should go, I'm hoping that my family will cut me some slack.
And to be fair, I'm not so sure Harry's doing it on purpose anyway. He's just going when the mood strikes him, and he's too groggy to ask about his location. On the few occasions when I do manage to catch him midstream and run, screaming and shouting, carrying him out the front door, he looks around in complete surprise, as if to say, "Whoa! I'm in the middle of something here!" He also doesn't seem to realize the person holding him and running is also screaming "Bad dog!" There are distinct advantages to being a deaf dog. All the while, of course, he's still going, which means I also have to sometimes clean the walls.
The problem is made worse by my wife's ultra sensitive nose. She could smell pee from the next room. (I'll bet she could spot a preschool from three blocks away, with the wind against her). I can clean all the carpets on the first floor and even spray with some leftover cinnamon-smelling stuff from last Christmas, and it makes no difference. My wife will come in, sit on the couch, take a sniff, and say, "Nope. I still smell pee!"
Last week, Harry spent the entire week at my in-laws house. Our daughters were off at camp, our son was working all week, and my mother-in-law didn't want Harry to be alone. The night before he came home at the end of the week, I cleaned all the carpets, using the special button marked "Turbo Scrub."
By Sunday, the entire first floor smelled like the men's room during half time at an NFL game. I didn't want to do the entire floor again. So, I got down on my hands and knees and started crawling around the carpet, sniffing for the offending spot(s). My daughter, who was sitting on the couch reading, looked over the top of her book and asked what I was doing.
"I'm sniffing for pee spots!" I said, my nose buried in carpet pile. "A good daughter would get down here and help me!"
My daughter made a gagging noise.
"Number one," she said, "a good Dad wouldn't ask. Number two, that's gross, and I will never buy a dog or a house. And number three ... "
I looked up.
"Number three, you really have a very sad life!"
I went back to sniffing like a bloodhound. From his perch in his dog bed in the corner, Harry — who probably couldn't even see me crawling around on the carpet with my nose to the ground — seemed to be shaking his head in agreement.
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