I’m going to be calling Chico and Annie the million-dollar mutts pretty soon. I just met with a concrete contractor to cover up the mud in their newly fenced dog yard with $2,000 worth of concrete. I must be crazy. Mud-crazy. The dogs have dug out all those holes I filled a couple weeks ago, and they’ve made several more. The grass is trashed. When I open the door, they cover my clothes with mud. It’s so thick on the laundry room floor I could fingerpaint in it. Outside, the mud sucks at my feet as I pick up the poop and claim the fence stakes Annie has pulled out, approximately 30 of them. The dogs and I have tracked black footprints all over the kitchen linoleum and the den and living room rugs. Sometimes I can catch the dogs and wipe all eight feet before they get in, but they’re quick, and once the floors are muddy, I just give up until bedtime when I mop the kitchen again.
Their whole yard won’t be concrete. They’ll still have a patch of grass and dirt, but they’ll have 12 feet of concrete in the area where the sun never hits. It’s the north side of the house and that section never dries out. In fact, I need to power-wash the mold and dirt off the walls. Welcome to Oregon.
The concrete’s coming next week. Meanwhile I bought some stepping stones at Wal-Mart so I had a dry place to walk. The dogs are using them, too. They’re not dumb, those canines. I think when they see their new yard, they’ll stretch out on the concrete, thinking, Ah, no mud.
Unleashed in Oregon 