Because part of my brain is insane, I recently talked my husband into getting me a puppy for my birthday. And I must admit that it's been fun getting my face covered in bucketloads of slobber from doggie kisses.
But then there's been the poop.
Little Mojo, who's a 16-week-old shepherd mix, isn't housebroken. We adopted him from the Humane Society, where he spent three weeks having only his cage to do his doody in. So I'm sure the concept of fresh air on his bum as he goes is pretty foreign to him. I also discovered today during his first puppy checkup that he's got an unusual kind of worms, which explains his constant, oh-my-lord-this-smells-so-bad-I-don't-think-I'll-ever-inhale-again diarrhea.
So during the innumerable hours I've spent on my knees scrubbing pungent stains out of my hated pink carpet -- and answering the frequent calls of Sam requesting cleanup help after she goes potty -- I've had a lot of time to contemplate poop.
Like, for example, why do animals have to do this?
Wouldn't we all be much more efficient if we didn't have to eat and, well, dump the waste? Really, ingestion and digestion are pretty darn gross.
They're also pretty darn expensive. How much more money would you have every month if you didn't have a grocery bill? If you didn't have to pay your sewer bill (or have your septic tank pumped occasionally) or buy toilet paper? If you didn't have to have toilets or a refrigerator or an oven or a dishwasher? If you didn't have any food-related items to throw away?
It would also save us a lot of time. When you figure in the time you spend every day choosing what to eat, making that food (or going to buy it), cleaning up the dishes, picking up stuff at the grocery store, stirring cream and sugar into your coffee, going to the bathroom, etc., you realize that you could probably have gotten a doctorate in rocket science by now.
So why were our bodies made to do this? Sure, eating's fun, but if we didn't have to eat, nobody would be obese. We wouldn't ever have to be on diets. We wouldn't have to fight the baby fat that refuses to release its hold on our abdomens.
I think this is the type of research the government should invest money in. Screw those studies that tell us what we already know (like the one a few weeks ago that "discovered" that people don't like other people who disagree with their views); this would be information we could use!
In the meantime, I guess I'll just have to keep asking co-workers if I smell like doggy poop -- much as I had to ask them when Sam was little if I smelled like baby poop -- because I just can't get that rancid smell out of my nose.
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