Shopping with Mr. BeaN

Warning: I purposely waited til after breakfast, brunch and lunch to post this. If you happen to be eating chocolate mousse while reading this, my sincerest apologies

Yesterday afternoon while Hopper was taking a nap with his dad, freeing me up for 45 minutes or so, I got the brazilliant idea to take Mr. Bean to Petsmart with me to pick up some dog food. Looking back on it, I can't really justify this decision other than to say that now that the dog is 7mths old, I figured it might be worth a shot to teach him how to walk on a leash. If I haven't already told you about how stupid of an idea it was to adopt a puppy one week before giving birth, let me just reiterate it for you now: STOOPID, STOOPID, and REALLY DUMB. I'll continue to keep repeating that sentiment for you for probably, oh say, the next 15 years, so don't get tired of it just yet. It's not that Bean is a bad little guy--he's actually pretty awesome considering the profound neglect he has suffered at the hands of two first-time parents who have been too busy figuring out diapers and how not to drop the baby to spend much time taking the puppy places and/or teaching him not to eat sunglasses. And I say "neglect" with the assumption that you know that had this dog come into our lives at any other time, he would have been going on outings with me on an almost daily basis and probably aced Puppy Kindergarten by now. I mean, I'm a person who once flew across country with one of her dogs in a cabin seat.. Mr. Bean has, um, been to the front yard. A couple of times. And yes, I feel horrible about that which is why I decided to take him with me yesterday.

It went ok at first. He happily jumped in the car and sat on the passenger seat. It was about a mile into the drive that I looked over and noticed that Mr. B was trembling a little. And then, sweet jesus, the farting began. At this point I should back up and tell you that I wasn't kidding about the sunglasses. He eats them. He also eats diapers, foot cream, fingernail files, flip flops, the nerf-like covering for the Wii controller, slightly rotting logs and I'm fairly certain from time to time: rocks. Now, I've known plenty of dogs that start with the tooting when they get a little nervous, so I wasn't surprised that Mr. B let one rip when he started feeling a little antsy. But this kept on and on, throughout the ride, through the store, up and down the aisles, me trying to act all nonchalant and the dog next to me leaving a little trailcloud of green smoky stank. All right up until we were about to check out when I'm about to pay for our purchases. All of a sudden I feel a little tug on the leash and this lady behind us says, "OH MY GOD" and I look down and Mr. Bean has, um, emptied his bowels. And when I say "emptied" I mean, everything this dog has consumed probably in the last month or so that has somehow stayed in his digestive tract is now on the floor of Petsmart, directly in the checkout lane. Don't worry, I'm not going to describe it any further, but I will just tell you that this, um, deposit of his caused everyone behind me to back up and switch to another lane. Before I had the chance to clean it up myself they called over TWO employees to do the job. At that point, one of them says to me, "Holy Crap! Is that part of a calculator!?!?" and I didn't even have to look down at it before I answered, "Probably."

Man, I felt so bad. I had literally scared the poo out of my dog. On the upside, at least I know now where that little calculator went.