My favorite local radio hosts, John Jay and Rich, do this segment on Mondays entitled, “After this weekend, I will never do ______ again.”
So let’s just say that after this weekend, I will never get on the airplane without hand sanitizer again.
Wednesday was the dog’s birthday. She turned 2, and in celebration of this event the husband bought her a giant steak, which he grilled and cut up into little pieces. We tried to get her to pose for a photo, but she wouldn’t tear her face away from the food dish long enough to snap the shutter.
Seriously, she ate that whole steak so fast I’m surprised it wasn’t still mooing on the way down.
Since we were taking the day off on Friday, that meant our Memorial Day weekend officially started on Thursday evening. We packed up the dog, the cat, and a couple of overnight bags and loaded them into the plane for a flight back to Phoenix.
It was the cat’s first flight, but the dog was pretty much an old pro. Having flown with us half a dozen times or so, she had the routine down. This is how it usually goes:
Make sure dog pottys before we leave for airport. Arrive at airport and load dog into back seat of plane. During taxi and pre-flight, dog sits in seat, leans forward, pants, and drools on our shoulders. After takeoff, dog lays down on seat and promptly goes to sleep. Dog does not wake up until after landing at our destination.
Thursday’s flight was different. About 45 minutes into a 2 hour flight, the dog started whining. We could not figure out why the dog was whining so much.
The whining stopped.
Chris and I both smelled it at the same time. We looked at each other, “Oh, no, Chloe!”
The dog had let lose some violent diarrhea all over the back seat of the plane.
Did I mention we still had over an hour left on our flight?
The entire half of the seat behind Chris was covered. The poor dog was sitting on the uncontaminated half of the back seat, one of her paws in the air, with an expression on her face that said, “I am so sorry but I tried to tell you guys and -eww- I do not want to put my paw in that.”
Chris turned to me, “Hon, can you get the paper towels and at least make sure the seat is covered so she doesn’t step in it and get it all over her?”
“Sure,” I replied, “where are the paper towels?”
“They’re behind your seat.”
So I reach back behind my seat. However, instead of finding the paper towels, my hand touches something wet and gooey. I am instantly suspicious that this is not dog drool that I have set my hand into.
Sure enough, the dog had also gotten the floor behind my seat.
Did I mention we still have over an hour left on the flight? And I had poo all over my hands. And we did not have any hand sanitizer.
The saving grace was that she had managed to miss the paper towels, so I wiped my hands the best I could and tried not to touch anything for the rest of the trip. About a half an hour after The Event, my husband looked at me and said, “I really can’t smell it that much any more.” I just looked at him. And held up my hands. “Speak for yourself.”
Eventually, we landed, I was able to wash my hands, and we hired a professional to shampoo the seats and floor. But valuable lessons were learned this past weekend. I learned that hand sanitizer can be extremely handy to have on the airplane, and Chris learned not to feed the dog a giant steak dinner the night before a plane trip. And Chloe learned… well, nothing. She’s a dog. Although if she were capable of complex thinking, it would probably be something along the lines of, “not all presents are as fun on the way out as they were going in.”
Happy Birthday, Chloe. Next time, leave the gift-giving to us, huh?
