Keeping It Real

Bast is a charming creature. Most people who meet him remark on how beautiful he is, how sweet and gentle he acts in public, how calm and relaxed he seems most of the time. At least once a day, I get playful offers to take him off my hands or jokes about kidnapping him.

Yeah, he is pretty awesome.

Look at that happy oaf. You want him, right? Wrong.

But let me you the truth about Bastas. He is nasty. Most wolfdogs are, in one way or another, it seems. Corpses are perfume, turds are chew toys and/or snacks, and I cannot begin to tell you how hard it is to potty train them sometimes. Even meals can get pretty gnarly.

Barf.

Why does he always go for their brains first?

Mm, yeah, brains.

The thing about Bast's nastiness is it's always so unexpected. You'd think you can anticipate potential sources of gross, and you can usually, but never 100%.

When picking out a new house, one of my non-negotiable requirements was NO CARPET. I did the whole "raw feeding in a carpeted household" and not even a direct command from Jesus himself would make me repeat that.

I look at this and wonder about my life choices.

Not having carpets has simplified my life immeasurably. Messes that previously required hours of scrubbing and soaking are now swept into a neat pile and sucked up with my all-surface vacuum. Bast, of course, still finds ways to make more work for me, though.

Bast suffers from bad allergies that make his nose run a lot. Because he's basically a toddler, he just eats his own snot all day no matter how close an eye I try to keep on it - Moms, you know what I'm talking about. Anyway, his boogie snacks upset his stomach sometimes. No big deal, if he yaks on the floor, I just spritz some vinegar on it and clean it all up.

Except tonight.

Bast lay in the entryway, idly chewing off the bony ends of his chicken quarter, when he abruptly lurched to his feet. He stalked off across the hardwood, padded through the stone tile of the kitchen, trotted down into the painted concrete in the living room, popped up onto the couch beside me...

And barfed snot and raw chicken all across my thigh and down in between the couch cushions.

A whole house of smooth surfaces and he goes out of his way to ralph on me and the couch.

Bast is a charming creature.