Going to the Dogs

Noted: dogs like mud. They like a little mud, they like a lot of mud. I am fairly confident that given an unlimited supply of mud, they'd never again emerge into the light of day.

So I get home from work yesterday. Tired, worn-out, and I have to do some work on my front lawn. Yes, it was green when we bought the house last year, but that's because all the weeds and clover were pretty much green. I spent all last summer mowing weeds to keep them at a reasonable height, but the idea of mowing weeds offends me. I don't really like to mow all that much, and if I must do it, I want to mow grass. Nice green level suburban style grass. I'm such a Tool of the Establishment. What happened to the guy who used to dress up as Eddie and go to the midnight showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show? Lost to Lawnboy, it appears.

The lawn. Yes, I wanted to rip it all up and start over last year - there are far more weeds than there is grass anyway. I was going to hire a bulldozer driver to come out and just scrape the top 10 inches of soil right off. Never got it done.

So this spring, I decided as an alternative to rent a roto-tiller and rip it up myself. Yes, I was going to till it all under and start over from scratch. Didn't get that done, either. Lazy, I guess.

I finally decided that I had to do something. Either I was going to have to mow weeds all summer again, or figure something else out. So I went over to Lowes and bought myself a couple of gallons of Bayer Advanced Southern Weed Killer for Lawns. Figured I'd kill off the weeds and keep what little grass remained - then encourage the grass to grow in the spaces where the weeds had been. It was a good plan.

Unfortunately, the Bayer Advanced yadda yadda weed killer didn't. Kill weeds, that is. If anything, they looked healthier. Happier. More at home. They definitely were enjoying it.

So I got myself some grass seed from Lowes, and a spreader. I also got some traditional 'weed-n-feed' for lawns - weed killer and fertilizer in one bag. I got one of those rakes that looks like the kind of detangling comb my mom used to use on my sister's hair until they'd cry, and it about as hard to drag through the lawn. But it removed the 'thatch' and whatever weak and puny weeds had actually succumbed to the lousy Bayer Advanced Lawn stuff. Took hours, I ended up with blisters. Mrs Wiggy bought me gloves, I wouldn't wear them. No, I don't want blisters. But men get blisters, they don't wear girly gardening gloves. I can't explain.

But finally, the weed-n-seed did it's job. The yard died. Very, very, dead. All but some tiny patches and islands of grass and a bit of crabgrass that apparently did a good enough job of mimicry that it fooled the weed-n-seed and was allowed to stick around. It looks like my yard has mange! Small patches of green grass, large areas of brown dead weeds and dirt.

So, with the grass seed down ('pencoated' so the birds won't eat it, hah), I have to water every night. We have a water spigot in the front yard, but it puts out like no water pressure. No idea why, and I'm not about to wedge my fat body under our house's crawlspace to find out. Like I could tell anyway.

That means I have to drag the hose around from the back of the house to water the yard. OK, so no problem. I do just that.

But the puppies (six months old now), whom we have deeded the back yard to - and they murdered it in their joy - have other ideas. Seems the hose has (had) a pin-hole leak. It sprayed a bit of water in the air. Whee! Good fun for puppies!

Mollie, who is definitely showing signs of being a Diabolical Genius, figured out that if she chewed on the hose where it was leaking, she could make the leak bigger. Ah, soon they had a nice fountain. Then Mollie (I saw her do it) figured out that she could grab the hose in her teeth and drag it so that the leak sprayed where she wanted it to. She found a low place in the back yard and directed the spray there. Soon, she had a small pond. And once she dug through the turf, she had a nice mudhole, which she proceeded to wallow in. And her brother Milo, who is bigger, stronger, and dumber than she is, merrily wallowed with her.

So now I have a pig-sty where my back yard used to be, and my front yard looks like it gots the mange, and my dogs are covered in mud.

This brings me to yesterday after work. Still with me? Good.

I get home from work. I unlock the front door. Go inside. The alarm is warning me that I have 30 seconds to punch in the secret code on the secret keypad (no, I won't tell you) or the central alarm boys call the local gendarmes and I find myself spread-eagled on my diseased-looking front yard pronto. As I begin to stroll through the house, with my mail in one hand, my empty lunch box in the other, our big orange cat "Diurmuid" (think "Dermot") greets me at the door and throws up at my feet. Not the usual "I'm hacking up a hairball-cough-cough-cough" thing. Nope, just a simple 'yack' and there's a pile of puke at my feet. Lovely.

I step over - noting that I have to clean this up quickly or the hardwood floor will be damaged. I deactivate the alarm. I clean up the puke.

The dogs, who are in cages (oops, I mean 'crates') in the kitchen, are going nutso. They want out NOW. I finish cleaning the goo up as quickly as I can, unlock the back door, and let them out. Mollie is so happy to see me that she proceeds to leap, as puppies do, up on me over and over again. Then she pees on my pant leg and my shoe. Sigh. Good doggie.

I clean myself as best I'm able, then I go out into what's left of our backyard to get the hose so that I can water what's left of our front yard. I use some of my photographer's 'Gaffer Tape' to try to fix the hole that Mollie chewed into it - the back yard has since dried to the consistency of a cement pond, so at least I don't have that to contend with, but I don't want to have a repeat performance.

I tape up the hole and shove that part of the hose under our fence that divides the front from the back yards. I figure that way, Mollie can't get at it even if it does leak a little. I position the sprinkler out front, and turn the hose on.

Well, I did an OK tape job. The thing leaks a little, but not bad. And the leak is on the other side of the fence, so Mollie can't get her teeth into it.

I go check on the sprinkler action in the front yard, then look in the fridge for a beer. Nope, we're out. So I have a Mountain Dew.

Two hours later...

Time to turn off the water, the yard's had enough. I go out into the back yard.

Oh, Dear Lord.

Mollie, that evil genius, has apparently figured out how to get the hose's damaged part back onto her turf again. She bit it and dragged it under the fence, (which moved the sprinkler, I've been watering our front porch, driveway, and car, for two hours), then she bit or ate the tape off the hose and proceeded to make the hole even bigger than it was before I taped it.

She has recreated Lake Muddy, and she has gone in search of the Loch Ness Monster, coming up with a reasonable facsimile in her own self. She is joyously, cheerfully, happily cover from head to toes in mud. Coated. Caked. And thrilled to see "Daddy," whom she immediately pounces upon. Milo joins in, similarly coated with mud and large enough now to knock me back a few feet when he jumps up and nails me with his huge paws right in the wedding tackle. Youch!

I am covered with mud. The dogs are nearly unrecognizable. The yard is a construction site, complete with a neighbor standing on a chair peering over the privacy fence at the spectacle. The city wants a construction permit if we're going to dig a pit more than three feet deep in our backyard, you could see the hole in our backyard from space.

I inform Mrs Wiggy, who begins to laugh at me. We grab the hose and hose down the pooches, which returns them to a state of cleanliness only exceeded by their wretchedness. They rocket through the house, leaving a trail of water behind them.

I am left with a back yard that resembles Farmer Brown's Pig Farm, a hose with a hole in it, and aching snarglies.

And no beer.

Pax,

Wiggy