Things I just *love* about owning a dog

This morning I took Mr. K on his walk to his newly discovered (for him, not me) Happy Place. He met a dog there named Whitney. He's normally a bit picky about dogs...he always starts out interested (except with small dogs, in whom he doesn't even feign interest), but usually loses it after about 30 seconds. Not so with Whitney, though. He loved her. They ran around, hard, off leash for an hour.

Not long into their time together, Mr. K began humping Whitney. Again, this is a behaviour he reserves for the most special dogs - she must have been a real winner. He just would NOT let up. Whitney, being the submissive gal that she is, didn't let him know not to do this. Her person kept urging her, "Just say no, Whitney," to no avail. So it went on and on, with me calling Mr. K off over and over.

Toward the end of this time, I noticed that his "lipstick" was really out - well, another dog owner helpfully pointed it out, in one of those charming conversations you have at the dog park about dogs' penises. Yes, the penis was out of the sheath. I figured that he was just really into Whitney, and that it would go down soon enough.

We left and came back home. Four hours later, his lipstick was still out. So I started googling this phenomenon (using a combination of words that resulted in as many bestiality sites as vet help sites, which makes me think that maybe I'm going to take this post down in a few days!) and discovered that this lipstick condition can actually be serious. I even tried to deal with it myself, as suggested - but found that I didn't have the requisite liquids on hand (which just goes to show you, well, the state of my sex life these days...)

So I called up the vet, this shy, gentle man I love. He said, "Well, I'm around - bring him in and I'll lube it up and put it back in." Gotta love that formulaion. So off I went on public transit, hurrying to beat rush hour, when dogs are barred from the transit, and knowing I'd have to walk home for an hour and fifteen minutes in the rain for that reason.

Ah yes, the lipstick in transit. Mr. K, being the grown-up dog that he is, is very good on transit. So he sat down, helpfully putting his penis on display for all to see. A woman across from me pursed her lips, shot me a dirty look, and turned away from us for the remainder of the trip. Other people laughed. Some just stared. I wanted to disappear into the wall - which says something about the ways we take on our animals' "stuff" as if we dictate or can control it.

At the vet, I waited for a while. A famous Canadian actor came in with his big, old dog. When the technician called us, her way of doing so was to cock her head, give Mr. K an ironic come hither look, and say to him, "Are you ready?" When we got into the examining room, I noticed that the entry in his chart simply said "April 16 - penis". Absurdity piled upon absurdity.

As it turned out, my pathetic attempts to fix the problem had actually helped a bit - the situation wasn't so dire by now. The vet did his thing, fixed it all up, and just let me go with no charge, advising me to "try to keep him from getting aroused" for the next day or so...

Ah, the joys of dog ownership...