I officially made it across the country, but didn’t have time to share any more adventures till now…a little heads up. The following story ain’t pretty so if your eating maybe wait a few hours.
A few weeks back, as we slowly bounced across this great country… I love my 2001 Jeep Wrangler but you can loosen vertebrae jostling up and down, I threw my back out once while driving my Jeep, that’s how uncomfortable the ride is. I’d rather take a stage coach across the country than one of those god damn things. And they burn gas so fast, to give you an idea. When I bought my jeep ten years ago, while driving down the highway for the first time, I pulled over twice, crawled under the Jeep and checked the gas tank. Because I was convinced there must be a pinhole in the tank. I am used to burning gas, but with the Jeep weighted down with all that crap, we were pulling into gas stations so often, sometimes I didn’t even have to piss. I needed to fill my gas tank more often than I needed to empty my bladder.
My point is being on the road for that long and in that ride, our dog, a thirteen year old English Cocker Spaniel was having a rough time. Dogs are used to a set routine, they thrive on a set routine, this dog was stressed out man! It’s old, it’s used to laying in the sun without a care in the world, now it’s getting tossed around the back of a Jeep for days on end. At first the dogs breath got to be so bad, I was driving with my f***ing head sticking out the window. My damn dog likes to lay on the console between the two front seats so she can be up front with us. But her breath was so devastating every ten minutes I was gently pushing her face into the back seat, and if the dog’s mouth touched any exposed skin, even for a second, that part of your skin would smell like rotting flesh until you cleaned it. That’s how gross my dogs breath was. It was pure torture, because every once in a while I wouldn’t smell her breath, then I’d get cocky and start taking full deep breaths thinking maybe the worst was over. However eventually, usually within five minutes, I’d inhale deeply and catch a full whiff of the dogs breath right up my nostrils. It was debilitating, I would literally go blind for about two full seconds. If we could bottle up my dogs breath and spread it on a large scale level, there would be no wars. In fact, if we could bottle my dogs breath, I’d label it WHITE FLAG. Because when the enemy gets a whiff of this, they will instantly surrender.
As brutal as the dog’s breath was, after about a week on the road, an odor began emanating from my dog’s ass that was so unreal, it made me actually MISS smelling the breath. The odor from her ass was so mind blowingly foul, the smell of a skunk would be like an air freshener. The smell was actually violent, I never knew a smell could be so offensive that the pain of smelling it is equal to being pummeled.
Keep in mind, I’ve had my dog long enough, that I have smelled this odor before, but only on rare occasions and only briefly. But this smell was constant, plus she started licking her ass, so now the smell from her ass was mixing with the smell of her breath, whenever she licked her ass I was afraid we were all going to combust. So, thru the internet and some friends in the know I was able to piece the problem together. As some of you may already know, dogs have two glands in their ass. These glands create a ridiculously gross, brownish liquid substance with an odor that is the dogs “calling card.” They leave a small shot of this whenever they shit, as the crap comes out it puts pressure on the glands and this nasty smelling brown stuff comes out. That’s why they sniff each others asses as well as each others crap, it let’s the dog know, whose been around. Now… when a dog is stressed out, as was the case with my pooch, they tend to create more of this fantastically disgusting substance. Also, my dog normally eats really good dog food that requires refrigeration. Unfortunately I was only able to feed the dog, canned dog food which loosened my dogs stool.
So it was the perfect storm brewing in my dog’s ass. You got a stressed out dog making more of this nasty odorous brownish liquid, and you have nothing hard rubbing against the glands to release this stuff. What happens is the stuff builds up inside her and just starts leaking out on it’s own. My dog jumped on my lap, when I got her off, there was a wet stain no larger than a quarter. That stain smelled up my vehicle so bad, I pulled over and stuffed the pants in the back hitch and drove the last two hours in my underwear. The dog laid on my wife’s pillow-she had to throw out the pillow because the smell was embedded inside.
At the height of this insanity, we were driving through Arizona. My wife suggested going to Sedona, we’d both heard the Red Rock cliffs driving into town were stunning, that’s actually an understatement. The town of Sedona and the landscape surrounding it is some of the most beautiful in the world. To be laying eyes upon such beauty for the first time, while simultaneously smelling the foulest stench known to man kind, was the ultimate yin yang, good vs evil. We checked into a great little hotel with a sick view of the Red Rock cliffs. Of course we had to pay an extra $50 for traveling with a dog.
A few nights of the journey we’d sneak the dog into a side door of whatever hotel we were staying at just to save a couple of bucks, even if they don’t allow dogs. We had a system, I would make sure not to pull up in front of the hotel or motel because the damn dog barks when you get out of the vehicle. So I would park in the back of the establishment and my wife would give the dog a “treat” before I got out so it wouldn’t bark. But sneaking a dog into a hotel/motel is just not worth it. It’s way too stressful because the dog barks and we’d start freaking out that security was going to come up and kick us out in the middle of the night. Plus when I’d have to take the dog outside to “go”, I’d have to wrap the dog in a coat and pretend I am casually going outside for a smoke or something. It’s not easy to wrap a 35lbs Cocker-spaniel in a coat and stroll outside.
So there we were in a great little hotel with a view of the Red Rock cliffs and a little backyard area connected to our room. As gorgeous as the sight was the dog’s ass was just too dominant, it was ruining any chance at a good time. My wife and I were forced to take matters into our own hands. We went online and viewed a youtube clip that demonstrates how to drain the dogs anal glands. Oh my god, I am not exaggerating when I say I would rather re-use a strangers dental floss than ever drain a dogs anal glands, and I had the easy part, I just had to hold the dog to keep it from biting. So there we were, outside our hotel room on a little patch of grass, I have the dogs muzzle on and I am gently petting it’s head while I whisper sweet nothings. Meanwhile my wife has the small plastic bags that come with an ice bucket on each hand, (we had no rubber gloves so we made do with the bags.) She rubbed vaseline all over the bags and gently stuck her fingers up the dog’s ass. My wife is f***ing awesome man! Talk about taking one for the team, she’s got both hands up our dog’s behind as she’s saying, “I feel two lumps, they must be the glands right?”
I said, “Yes, now squeeze them hard.”
“I don’t want to hurt the dog.” She answers.
I said, “The dog is hurting us, I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, for the love of god, squeeze woman!” She gently squeezed the glands and the dog didn’t wince in pain, in fact the dog seemed relieved. My wife started yelling, “Oh my god, this is so gross.”
I can’t see because I am upfront caressing the dog, I’m like ‘What, what?”
She goes, “It’s all pouring out, this is the grossest thing I’ve ever done in my life!”
I go, “We’ll keep squeezing it must be working.” Before you knew it there was a stench so strong filing the Arizona air that I thought the National Guard might be called in. Finally after about ten minutes of rubbing and squeezing the anal glands my dog was “tapped out.” My wife gently cleaned the dogs behind with some disinfectant, gave it a “treat” and plopped it on it’s freshly laundered dog bed. Low and behold the stench was officially gone. The last four days of our trip were scent free, and just in time. Because it rained the last leg of the trip and we had to keep the windows up. If my dog’s ass was still leaking at that point I would have had to drive the rest of the way in a wet suit and goggles with rain pouring in because no human could survive the stench of the brown liquid.
Thank god youtube had a clip on how to deal with this situation, I’d like to take a moment to thank Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and all the other geniuses that were responsible for inventing the computer, the web and in this particular case, You Tube. Because without it, I’d probably be passed out in the front seat of my jeep on the shoulder of a deserted Arizona highway.