Sometimes instincts just kick in. You know how it is…you’ve burned your finger on some hot jam so you pop it in your mouth and burn your tongue…or you’re pinning-up a hem on a fidgety person’s dress and you hold the pins between your lips and maybe jab one in point first? Or maybe you need to pick up a dog poo quickly and you can’t do it with your gi-normous winter mitts on, so you pull one of the mitts off with your teeth so you can open the poo bag with a bare hand and pick up the steaming treasure in the snow while you get frost-bite on your fingers?
If you’re a pet sitter in a cold climate… you’ve done it. But here’s the thing you have to watch for if you’re a newbie dog walker or, if like me today, you seem to need a third hand.
I’m not sure how it happened, but I guess I was daydreaming a little and when I suddenly found myself needing to pull the bag from my pocket, I grabbed both extension leashes in one hand and went through my pocket with the other. Now, these leashes as you know have big hard handles and if you have small hands like me, there’s no more room for anything else if you try to hold two handles at once.
I’d pulled off my mitt, with my teeth…had the leashes in one hand (attached to a Newfoundlander and a Bulldog)…and a handful of poo in the other hand as I grabbed it. Now then…what to do. What to do? No more hands and an open bag of poo. Naturally I couldn’t let go of the leashes but I couldn’t let go of the poo. So, unfortunately, instinct kicked in. Yep. I managed to stick the mitt under my arm which left my teeth free as a bird…to grab the top of the bag so I could get a better grip for spinning it and tying-it off.
Ah…but I’m a professional pet sitter so my years of experience finally, FINALLY, kicked-in and just as I was closing my choppers on the bag I thought….”Hey, this is a bag of poop for goodness sake (I’m paraphrasing). Maybe I shouldn’t bite it!” I’m sure the dogs thought I’d lost my marbles when I started to laugh.
Needless to say – I found a way out of the predicament without any injury to myself or letting the dogs go free. But be warned. When you are out in the field, pay attention to your dogs and don’t daydream. It could be dangerous.
Until next time…have fun out there!
PS – You’re getting a beautiful fragrant rose as a photo for this post because I didn’t want to show a bag of poo or embarrass the dogs I was out with by putting up their photo.
