The Mysterious Incident of the Dog Turd in the Night time

Skribit question: How much would you sell Rubinman for?

Did I ever tell you about the time I found a turd on the kitchen worktop? The kitchen worktop WHERE WE PREPARE OUR FOOD? THAT WE EAT? No? Well, picture this, people…

It’s early one morning. You’ve just dragged your unwilling self from bed, in response to the constant barking that’s been coming from the kitchen for ten minutes now. You stagger downstairs, rubbing your eyes and asking yourself once again, “Why did we buy a puppy?” Did I mention it’s EARLY?

You reach the kitchen and open the door to reveal its occupant: a puppy Rubinman, who for some reason doesn’t seem quite as ecstatic to see you as he normally does. In fact, he almost looks guilty. Brushing this thought aside, you trudge your weary way to the back door, to let the Rubinman out for his morning ablutions, and as you turn the key in the lock, you happen to glance idly at the kitchen counter to your right, and on that kitchen counter (THAT YOU PREPARE YOUR FOOD ON! YOUR FOOD THAT YOU EAT!) you see a TURD. Once more for dramatic effect, ladies and gentlemen: A TURD.

You instantly stop what you’re doing, scarcely able to believe your eyes. Surely not… it can’t be… it just can’t be. But it is. Someone has crapped on your worktop – and you suspect that someone may still be in the room, looking guilty. You look at the Rubinman. He looks at you. You both look at the turd. You look back at the Rubinman, who seems to say, “Turd? What turd? I don’t know nothin’ bout no turd, dude. And anyway, lookit the size of me. Am a PUPPY! How would little puppy me even get up there? Better ask Terry, is all I’m sayin’…”

You consider this matter further as you let the dog out and remove the offending… turd. Then you scrub down the kitchen with bleach, about fifty times in a row. Then you have a shower – again with the bleach. Then you have another shower. As you stand there, scrubbing the palms of your hands with a nailbrush and wondering if you and your home will ever feel clean again, you ponder the matter. For the Rubinman has a point, you see. There appears to be no way that he, being a puppy, could have made it up to the worktop and back down again. Seriously, how could the Rubinman have done it?

So you finish your shower and you go to the bedroom, where Terry is still sleeping soundly, mercifully unaware of the scenes of horror that have just taken place in the kitchen.

“Terry, did you by any chance crap on the kitchen worktop last night?” you ask, trying to make the question sound as casual as possible. Terry says… Actually, maybe let’s just draw a veil over what Terry had to say in response to that question.

So. It wasn’t Terry. It wasn’t me. Rubin says it wasn’t him, but the thing is, I just don’t believe him. He was found at the scene of the crime. He was in the habit of crapping in the kitchen at the time. And to be perfectly honest, it wouldn’t have been the first time we’d found a dog turd in a place it really shouldn’t have been. He had previous convictions, basically. I mean, it just didn’t look good for him, did it?

As for how it got there, well, you know the phrase, “Don’t play with your food”? When Rubin was a puppy, you could easily have exchanged the words “your food” in that sentence with …. Yeah, so this totally wasn’t the kind of answer you were expecting to your innocent “How much would you sell Rubinman for?” question, was it? In fact, you’ll probably be scarred for life now. I know I am.

Why am I telling you all of this? Well, in the years that have passed since The Mysterious Incident of the Dog Turd in the Nighttime, that turd has continued to haunt me. Images of it have popped, unbidden, into my head from time to time – most often when I try to prepare food on the kitchen worktops, to be honest. Thank God we replaced those bad boys is all I can say! So when I received the Skribit question, “How much would you sell Rubinman for?” and I started to write a long, gushy entry about how Rubin is my prechus fur-baby, and no amount of money would ever persuade me to part with him, I suddenly remembered The Turd.

That’s why my answer to the question is: when can you pick him up? We’ll even throw in the yoda costume for free…

No, I’m kidding. Rubinman is not for sale. And after reading this, would you really want to buy him?

(P.S: Rubin’s account of The Mysterious Incident of the Dog Turd in the Nighttime can be found here.)