A Walk in the Woods

A few days ago I wrote my 300th post for this blog. I mentioned that I occasionally would like to write about something other than personal finance issues. I got a few comments telling me to go for it, and I decided to take their advice. Sorry in advance…

A few weeks ago my nephew Toby and I went morel mushroom hunting. We like to take our dogs with us when we go into the woods together, but this time out I decided to leave mine at home. They have kind of an embarrassing attraction to each other. Toby’s dog is a three year old male boxer mix and mine is a two year old female black lab. They are about the same size, and they like nothing more than get out into the woods and hump each other.

You don’t get this kind of entertainment with cats.

Our dogs run around endlessly chasing each other, play fighting and humping. Yes, they are both fixed. And yes, mine is a female. We are hoping they get this figured out soon, as we are all getting older and have really seen about enough. So I left my dog at home this time and we took Toby’s dog shroomin.

Back to the story. We hit one of our favorite spots and are looking for morels, and his dog, named Mack, is running around sniffing things, rolling around and just being a dog. After a while Toby sniffs the air and asks me if I smell that.

“What?”
“It smells like poop.”
“No, I don’t smell it.”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
We continue on.

Mack runs up close to Toby again, then away.

“Dude, you can’t smell that?”
“What, poop again? No, I don’t smell anything.”
We continue on, finish that section of the woods, and decide to head back.

Again the poop question and I still have not smelled it. Mack runs off ahead of us.

We get back to the vehicle and I want to stop and eat the lunch I packed. I get it out and start eating when the stink hits. There is no mistaking what it is. We both look down, and Mack is lying at our feet. That’s why it came and went, and only Toby could smell it. Mack was the carrier and stuck close to his master. All I could think of at that point was “good boy.”

There was a mud pit just a little ways back along the trail, and Toby had to take Mack there and wash him down before there was any way we could be in a car with him. After the first time it was still so bad he had to take him back to the muddy water again.

The best (or worst) part of the story? Two days earlier I had been in that same part of the woods when the bowels had to move. Mack simply did what comes naturally to him when finding such a treasure.

Like I said, you don’t get this with cats.