A few days ago I wrote about my dog Jack, who has officially reached Senior Citizen Status, as he has nearly reached a decade of life on this earth. I think I jinxed him, because he's been having some of those oft-told "Senior Moments" -- and they're not pretty ...Jack has a deathly fear of the smoke alarm, and in our small apartment, it doesn't take much to set it off. It blasts off at least once a week, when some smokin' meal is being cooked in the kitchen, and it sends poor Jack into spasms of terror. Literally. At the first high-pitched beep, Jack's tail whips down between his legs, his eyes turn into agonized saucers, his right paw is lifted, and he begins to shake to the point where it seems as if he's having a seizure. Sheer, pure, unadulterated terror. For comfort, then, he must stay as close to me as possible, pushing himself up against my leg for safety from The Noise of the Beast -- which, really, is counter-intuitive, since the origin of the noise came from the kitchen in the first place, where I am slaving over the stove. He's stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place, but he chooses my presence -- and seizure-shakes -- over escape into another room.
Last night I was working on Sweet and Sour Peppers (recipe to be posted soon -- way, way, way too delicious not to share!) and this time the broiling chicken was the culprit. A little too much bubbly juice in the pan, quickly followed by the piercing, shrill beep ... and then came Jack's Senior Moment:
He peed all over the kitchen floor.
His terror was so acute, his seizure-shakes were so wracking, that he just couldn't help himself. Now, if you know my kitchen, it is very, very small. There's not much room for me, my terror-stricken huddling dog, and a giant puddle of pee. The thing is, I didn't even know he did it -- he's never lost physical control like that before, so I wasn't anticipating it. I walked over to the back door, opened it, and provided an escape route for Jack, coaxing him to shake out his willies in the back yard. He scurried out into the darkness for a minute, and when I walked back to the stove, I saw water all over the place. What the heck? What did I spill? I wracked my brain, trying to think of what I did that would result in such a puddle, and it was then that I noticed the color. Oh, noooooo ...
Of course, it just had to happen when everything was happening at once -- Don came home from work, the timer was going off signaling the end of the cooking chicken, the peppers needed to be dumped into the skillet, the noodles were about to boil over ... and I had a reservoir of pee to clean up. UGH! I had no choice but to forgo the sweet greeting to my husband -- instead of "Welcome home, honey!" all he heard from me was, "Please clean up the pee!!!"
Poor Jack ... what a moment for him. And I'm afraid we'll have another episode of lost control sometime today, for when I walked into the kitchen this morning I saw Grace's half-eaten banana on the floor, cereal crumbs scattered about, and two prunes suspiciously missing ... Two prunes. Two prunes and a dog.
Oh, that can't be good ...
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