the curious incident of the dog in the night

This dog, unlike the one that Sherlock Holmes referred to, did bark in the night.  He barked, and barked, and barked.

This is unusual for either of our dogs, but especially for Harlan, who's the older, sensible one.  Our dogs sleep in the laundry, and we have a laundry chute (which always reminds me of Sheila the Great, by Judy Blume), so I yelled down to chute for Harlan to "SHUT UP please be quiet dear sweet Harlan". 

It took a while, but he did stop barking.  For about 5 minutes.  So I opened the chute again, ready to call encouraging comments down to him.  And that's when it hit me.  The smell.  The stench.  The awful, overwhelming, overpowering reek of a good little dog with a bad tummy who had been trying for over an hour to let us know that he needed to go out, NOW!  So I raced downstairs, opened the door (thereby smearing poo all over the floor, as the door opens inwards), and let him outside.  He was very grateful, to say the least.   Jasper the Insane thought a 2am frolic outside was great!  Sad to say, he displayed very little empathy for his poor, ill mate.

So far, so gross.  But then, while I was feeling lazy (and tired) and would happily have cleaned up in the morning, Harlan refused to go back into the laundry.  So, at 2am, I cleaned up dog-poo, of the ...er...messy variety.

Luckily, Harlan seems ok this morning.  Rest assured we'll be keeping a close eye on him.  For the record, when I have a moan about my un-housetrained dog, it's not this good boy, it's Jasper the Insane.

Me?  Tired, and most of all guilty.  Poor little H-Bomb.

And, because I couldn't insert photos the other day for some reason, here is the Gig with Jasper the Insane and Only Periodically Housetrained.