Angus and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

And his day would have been even worse if not for the magical goddess of Mary the dogwalker.

I am back from New York and all is well. I've just come indoors from almost an hour of dog fun--Angus and Rosie in the trampled back yard, playing with Greta and Gus, the Brittany spaniels next door. Gus is just a couple of weeks older than Angus, and only a little smaller. (Skinnier. He can slide into places pudgy Angus cannot.)

A Cooper's hawk flew into the neighbor's birch tree and watched for a while, but the dogs were playing right around the spirea bush, which this time of year is loaded not with flowers but with sparrows (tasty morsels to a Cooper) and finally the Cooper flew off in frustration. "Too many dogs," it might have muttered.

It is so nice to be home.

But Friday--Oh, Friday. Poor Angus. I WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU AGAIN, ANGUS.  (Until mid-March, when I have to go back to New York.)

Angus eats puppy chow, little tiny kibbles no bigger than pieces of grit. But he's growing fast, so last week we decided to switch him to the same brand of kibble but for larger puppies. Same kibble, just bigger. Right? Well, apparently not exactly the same.

When you switch a dog's food, you do so gradually. Sudden change can upset their digestive systems. Well, adding 1/3 cup of the new kibble to his current kibble was enough to upset our boy. Thursday night he was up four times--10:30 p.m., midnight, 2 and 4 a.m., the fourth time for a very unpleasant task in the back yard.

I was a zombie at work Friday morning and I had to catch the train to the airport by 1 p.m. There was no way to go home and check on him before I left--I don't drive to work, and the buses take 45 minutes. To make matters worse,  the high school girl who normally lets him out at noon was not able to come that day.

Ack. Poor Angus, with a bad stomach, stuck in his crate for hours!

Mary to the rescue. She moved up her afternoon visit from 3 to 2, and when I told her that I wouldn't be able to let him out at 6 as I normally do and Doug wouldn't be home until after 7 p.m., she said she'd come back at 6 and let him out again.

Generous as it was of her, it was not quite enough for Angus. When she got there at 2, he had soiled his crate, and he was miserable. She played it down in her email to me ("There was a little soft stool in his bedding," she wrote. "He acted normal on the walk, though, and loved a few treats.")

But it was bad enough that she took his soft frog blanket home with her to wash.

Did you read that? She took his soft frog blanket home with her to wash.

I don't even know how to thank someone who would do this!

And then she came back at 6.  But by the time Doug got home at 7, more mess. The bedding inside his crate was soaked. Doug had to wash everything, and he reported that Angus was in an owly mood, grabbing things, chewing them, even destroying the white Christmas lights we had draped along the radiator.  "Puppy drama," Doug wrote.

You can imagine how I felt, far away in New York, sleep-deprived, worried, feeling terrible guilt for not being home.

The report Saturday morning was not good. "We were up at 1:15, 3:15, and 5," Doug reported. "A lot of pooping. He pooped in the hallways upstairs after having been out at 5."

He decided--wisely, I think--not to take Angus to puppy class.

But as Saturday wore on, things began to improve. Doug went back to the old kibble. He bought a second fleece toy to eliminate the toy jealousy that had reared its ugly head last week, and texted me photos of Rosie and Angus playing with it. Angus's stomach settled down, and Doug took both dogs for a walk in the weird January thaw. He kept Angus so busy that Angus slept solidly all night. (But Doug didn't. "I kept waiting to hear him chirp," he said.) And truth be told I didn't either, in my bed in New York, thinking about home.

And now it is Sunday afternoon, and I am home, and the dogs have played, and they are both in the crates sound asleep and I might go take a nap myself.

Just now I went out on the back porch for something or other and there, nicely folded, soft and clean was Angus's frog blanket. Mary brought it by and left it for us very quietly. I am speechless.