Speak Yourself

Mystery poop

October 26, 2010 at 3:36 pm (On my mind) (diarrhea, dog, mess, poop, Ratchet, shock, sick, weird)

This story is just too weird not to share. But it comes with a warning that those with a squeamish stomach would probably be wise to discontinue reading this now.

I got home around 5:30 yesterday evening from a meeting I was covering for the newspaper. The husband, who had been home since about 4:30, had yet to venture upstairs. Around 6 or 6:30, he decided it was finally time to take a shower. He smelled something bad in the bathroom, but didn’t see anything and thought it could have just been him as he had been working all day. He pulled back the shower curtain to turn on the water when he discovered it.

There was diarrhea poop splattered all over the inside of the tub.

Needles to say, we were shocked. It obviously hadn’t come up from the drain. The only poop-producer that had been in the house all day besides us was Ratchet, who has never had an accident in the house before. Also, he never goes in the bathroom and won’t even come close to the tub because he hates baths. There were no dog prints in the tub or on the floor and nothing on the carpet outside the bathroom. It didn’t seem like Ratchet had gotten into the garbage and eaten any human food and he was acting normally for all we knew. And to top it off, he had been alone only about 3 1/2 hours since he had a normal bowel movement on his afternoon walk at lunch.

Our thoughts expanded to wonder if a maintenance man with a strange vendetta or some prankster up to no good had been in the apartment. But after much consideration, decided there was no way that had happened. The front door deadbolt was locked and nothing in the apartment had been touched. It had to have been the dog.

I had the hubby take Ratchet outside to see if he still had the runs while I started cleaning up the mess. Lo and behold, just a minute or two into his walk he squatted and squirted all over the grass. He squatted probably 4 or 5 times in about a half hour outside. Though we now knew for sure who the culprit was, we were still completely floored.

Somewhere in his history, he had been trained to go to the bathroom in the tub. Maybe his previous owners had his puppy training papers in the tub before he learned to go outside. We have no idea. But Ratchet had clearly held back the tide as long as he possibly could before deliberately climbing into the tub when he just had to let loose.

I cleaned up the mess, discarding the bath mat that had slid into the tub and was covered in diarrhea poo from when Ratchet hopped in. We made sure he was emptied out before finally heading back to bed around 10 p.m. At 12:30 in the morning, the husband heard Ratchet’s nails on the bathroom floor, so I got up and let him out for another round of squirty poo.

This morning, he was still squirty on his morning walk. I didn’t think it likely that he would have another explosive round, but I still took the precaution of putting towels on the carpet outside of the bathroom door just in case. That brainwave saved me this afternoon.

Ratchet again popped into the tub when he couldn’t hold it any longer. There was more diarrhea in the tub when I got home for lunch, though less than yesterday. Though he had managed to avoid stepping in it yesterday, he got one paw in it today and the towels showed a couple of poopy paw prints. I also found the blinds on the back door completely destroyed. I don’t know whether that was him trying to get outside because he had to poo or if he was just terrified from the pretty intense thunderstorms we had this morning. (We know he’s scared to death of thunder and other noises like fireworks and gunshots.) Ratchet was clearly embarrassed or ashamed that he had an accident in the house when I got home. He didn’t come greet me until I called him (which is unusual) and he hung his head and kind of slinked around when he did come to me.

I took him outside and he was still squirty. After consulting my mother, I called the vet , got him in immediately and let my editor know that I wouldn’t be back in the office for a while. The vet tested a sample of the poo I literally scooped out of the bathtub with a crappy spoon, and he determined that Ratchet didn’t have any intestinal parasites… whew. Instead, he had probably eaten something he shouldn’t have (like a dead mouse or animal poo) when we took him to a local dog park Sunday. It caused a buildup of bacteria in his colon and he is afflicted with canine colitis.

We’ve got 10 days of antibiotic pills and he’s not allowed to eat anything for 24 hours. Hopefully that will solve the problem and I won’t have to be worried about the apartment when I go to work. I decided to spend the rest of the day working from home so I could be there to let Ratchet out every couple of hours and avoid any more huge messes.

We are deeply grateful that Ratchet was taught to head for the tub, though who knows how he was taught that. Maybe when he peed or pooped inside as a puppy, the owners hurried him off to the tub instead of outside. But no matter how he learned it, it made the mess so much easier to clean up and limited the damage to the apartment to practically nil. But if no one taught him that, then we have the most intelligent dog in the world!