Dogs are like a status symbol in Colorado. Let me rephrase that: certain types of dogs are a status symbol in Colorado. If you have a granola, mountainy dog, then you are an official granola mountainy person. You know the dogs. They are the dogs that look like half wolf and half Gandalf that are left tied loosely outside crunchy coffee shops. Their ears are always up, they don’t move til their master returns with his Americana and they have an air of intelligence, nay, wisdom about them. They walk right next to their master’s
Teva sandals and never pull on their leash. They stick their heads out the windows of their master’s jeeps on the highway and smile into the wind. They somehow, by their very presence, make their masters look cool. If they belong to a whole family, they make the whole family look cool. They go everywhere with their crunchy families and put a whole lot of pressure on Coloradans who have stupid, disobedient leash-pulling dogs with droopy ears and a chronic drool.
Nevertheless, we were a crunchy Colorado family and I wanted to pretend like Otis could accommodate my need to be the full meal deal. It was a spectacular summer night in Colorado and we were going to head out on a family outing. Nothing too ambitious (I am only faux crunchy) just a trip out to our local coffee shop where the best cakes in the universe were waiting for us. They had an outdoor deck where we could sit right in the middle of our mountains and eat our cake. As we were loading up into the suburban, on a whim born from my desire to be a true mountainy family, I suggested we bring Otis, our Bassett Hound. Lovely reader, please understand, this is like suggesting we invite Jabba the Hut to a tea party or a warthog to a Quinceañera or a toad to a bubble bath. My family must have been bewitched by the Colorado summer afternoon heat because they wholeheartedly agreed. We slapped a harness on him, hoisted his weird body into the suburban and off we went.
Costello Street Coffee House is one of my favorite places on earth. It is a historic Victorian house, circa 1885, that was ten minutes from my little house in the woods. The decor on the inside is all antique tea house style. Their breakfasts are fantastic and it was a habit of ours to take our kiddos on early morning dates to Costello Street. Ivy had a fabulous little girl birthday party there and I have met many a bestie there for lunch over the years. This place is a part of our family culture. It was about to become a place we might not want to show our faces again.
Otis farted and slobbered all the way there and we were all glad for some fresh air after the ten minute drive. We made our way to the outside seating, on the deck. I fastened Otis’s leash to the foot of my cast iron deck chair and sat on it, figuring that it would be hard for him to pull his way out of that scenario. We all ordered our cake and drinks and sat in the setting sun, reveling in our mountainy family, complete with dog. We were doing it. We were being mountainy. We had our mountainy dog with us on a mountainy family outing, in the actual mountains. We were legit.
In a about fifteen minutes, the waitress arrived with our order. I am not exaggerating about their cakes. They about 8 inches high, gourmet, aesthetically pleasing, no holds barred perfection. I had ordered German chocolate cake and it was a spectacle. The huge wedges she served us hung over the sides of our plates and we, feeling the way we do about cake, were stoked. This was next level: mountains, summer, sunset, dog AND cake. As our waitress walked off, I lifted my first forkfull of cake to my mouth and simultaneously smelled the steamy, sickening smell of fresh dog poop. I gagged and put my fork down. What the? Was this cake make of poop? Then I remembered who was tied to my chair. NO NO NO NO NO NO NOOOOOOOO! I peeked over the side of my chair and saw Otis sitting contentedly right next to a large DQ cone size swirl of dog poop. The poop was between he and I and I was scared to move. There were other people on the deck, trying to enjoy their cake as well, so I turned to whisper alert Barry. But when I looked back at my family, they had already pushed their cake away and covered their noses with their hands. I said nothing and squeezed myself out of my chair trying hard not to run the chair through the poop swirl or move Otis in any way that might cause him to sit on it. (I already knew from the Otis Poops In The Car experience that he has no qualms about resting his laurels on his own poop.)
I went into the coffee shop and requested some plastic bags and paper towels. They asked me why I needed bags so I had to tell them. It was at that moment, that I knew we had failed at being mountainy. As I walked the walk of shame back to the poop I asked myself once again, why I chose Bassett Hounds over and over again. If a poodle had pooped on this deck, no biggie. Literally. We probably would have eaten our cake and never noticed. We may have enjoyed our whole evening and left not even knowing. Or, worst case scenario, we would have risen to leave, seen a little pebble of poop, giggled to ourselves and kicked it off the deck with our Tevas. But no. I pretty much needed a shovel and a fire hose to right this wrong. Somebody took His Royal Disgustingness to the truck. The kids tried to eat their cake with their noses plugged which really defeated the purpose of cake. When I was done with disaster management protocol, I took my cake to go and have never really been able to enjoy German chocolate cake since.
We gave “mountainy dog family” a few more tries before we officially gave up. We tried to take him camping and ended up driving him home the next day because he could not deal with sleeping somewhere besides his dog house. We took him on hikes where he just sat down and stopped walking when he had had enough. We came to accept Otis for who he was and stopped trying to make him into a status symbol. We had to face, as a mountainy family, that we had chosen Otis entirely for what he looked like (which you would only understand if you are into long torsos, t-rex legs and elephant ears). Otis has now gone onto that great field of Bassetts in the sky and we remember him fondly, in spite of all the poop. We loved Otis because he would let the kids climb all over him, even when he was eating. We loved him because he was sweet and loyal and ours. Even in his final days, when he was in great pain and suffering so much, he was still like a stinky teddy bear always up for cuddle. RIP Otis.
