Ben the dog
About 15 years ago my family was asked to look after a neighbour's dog, Ben, while our neighbours were on holiday. My parents never let me have a dog when I was younger, they told me it was because dogs were expensive but I'm certain it's because they couldn't be arsed to look after it. So looking after a lurcher/collie cross for a week seemed like a brilliant thing. Oh how wrong I was.

When Ben arrived the morning they were due to leave for "cultured-and-sophisticated" Costa del Sol, his owners informed us that Ben had 'a bit of a cold' and it was nothing to worry about.

My mum took Ben in the house and wished them a happy trip. No sooner as the door had shut, Ben lurched forward, coughing and hacking, and then from his lungs produced what I could only describe as an enormous lump of white mucus or phlegm, literally two inches across. It reminded me of a lump of that fancy mozzarella you get in packets, it was all thick and gloopy. Luckily, being a wee nipper, I wasn't expected to help my mum clear up that awful mess, but from her face I could tell it was certainly not pleasant. If that sounded pretty disgusting (I could have gone more graphic if you'd like), the worst is yet to come.

Ben was running a fever an shaking quite violently so we put him in his basket and left him to it. About 15 minutes later I was alerted to him by a weak whimper, then I heard a noise that sounded like the wettest, dirtiest fart you could possibly imagine. Walking into the kitchen I was presented with a horrifying sight: Ben was lying on his side, just outside his basket with his rear end pointed towards his basket. In a 45 degree impact zone from the sphincter of this poor creature lay what must have been literally a bowel-load of hot, yellow, extremely smelly diarrhoea-esque shit. Some of this stuff had sprayed a good two metres. His basket was absolutely ruined. If that wasn't bad enough, at this moment Ben hacked and coughed up another load of the white goodness.

So there was this dog, practically surrounded in either phlegm or shit, lightly shaking. I did the only thing a 10-year-old would do at seeing and smelling this - I chundered. Chundered my fucking guts out. At this point my sister walked in, called my mum, and my mum came in. According to my sister, my mum at this point walked out the room, cried for a minute, then went and got some marigold gloves, a mop and bucket.

The absolute worst part of this story? This happened a good 3 or 4 times over the week. My mum is a fucking saint.
(The Oscillating Gibbon is eating curried squid, Thu 7 Jan 2010, 17:59, 1 reply)

I can't believe you vomited every single time...
*click*
Your mum is awesome.
(LongJohnBaldry, Fri 8 Jan 2010, 14:57, closed)