Sick as a Dog

It hasn’t been the best of weekends.

Friday morning kicked off with a comment on one of my blogs from someone informing me that I “deserve to be shot” because I’d said I liked a certain handbag. So that was nice. After that, it all went downhill.

We reckon Rubin ate something funny. Actually, to be completely honest, we think the “something funny” might have been the thing otherwise known as “Rubin’s dinner”, because not an hour after he’d finished eating it, he abruptly brought it all right back up again, all over his bed.

Now, I am a squeamish person. I don’t really “do” vomit, not even when it’s … well, let’s just say it was in pretty much the same state it had been in when Rubin last seen it. This was very thrilling for Rubin. “Lookit!” he seemed to be saying. “My dinner is BACK! Result!” So pleased was he with this trick, in fact, that he decided to repeat it ten minutes later, this time vomiting all over the cushion I’d given him to lie on while his bed made its final journey out the front door and into the rubbish bin.

(In fairness, I had been planning to buy him a new bed anyway, so it wasn’t just laziness/squeamishness that made me take one look at the upchuck and say, “Nah, let’s not even TRY to clean that up.”)

Terry was given the unhappy task of cleaning up the mess, while I attempted to comfort Rubin, who was now slightly less impressed with his own ability to regurgitate his dinner, and was feeling very sorry for himself indeed.

We were now one dog bed and one cushion down, so, because I am a FREAKING IDIOT, I did what only stupid people would do, and took Rubin into our bedroom, to lie on the snowy white duvet that…hey!… had only just been changed. I think you can probably guess where I’m going with this, can’t you?

Yes, Rubin performed the third and final installment of his “amazing re-appearing dinner” trick all over the white duvet. We were now one dog bed, one cushion and one duvet cover down. So I washed the duvet cover, gave Rubin Terry’s beanbag to sleep on for the night (no, he didn’t throw up on that, although it would have made a better story if he HAD), and the next day, en route to my parents’ house for dinner, we stopped at Pets At Home and bought Rubin (now restored to full health – or so we thought, anyway) a new bed.

Specifically, we bought him a red “pleather” bed with … wait for it… a WHITE FAKE FUR CUSHION ON IT.

I mean, it seemed a good idea at the time, but all I can say to you now is NEVER DO THAT. Never buy your dog, who has a reputation for peeing on things, crapping on things and now vomiting on things a freaking WHITE FUR CUSHION to sleep on. No good can come of that kind of crazy-ass behaviour, and, indeed, when I awoke at 5am on Sunday morning to the sound of Rubin barking in his “I’ve done something and I don’t think you’re going to like it” way, I knew even before I opened the door to his room (Well, it’s really the “office”, but he thinks it’s his) what I would find.

DIARRHEA – that’s what I found. All. Over. The. White. Cushion.

“That was really stupid of us, giving him that,” said Terry, as I crawled back into bed some time later, being careful to wake him up so I could share the sorry tale of what had just gone down. “Like, really, REALLY stupid.”

And you know what? It totally was.

Final tally:

Soft furnishings “soiled” this weekend: four.
Number of times Rubin has been bathed: two

I think that pretty much sums it up. Thank God it’s Monday…