Enough with the canine bodily fluids already

So this weekend the mystery of the pee-soaked dining room rug was finally definitively solved; as we suspected, the culprit was Jelly, the elderly lady mutt who barely even knows Ess exists. D caught her in the act; I swooped in, picked her up and deposited her in the backyard, whereupon she commenced wandering around, as if to ask herself, why am I here? I already peed -- what else is left to do?

Jelly seems to be even more arthritic than usual, and yesterday she had a really bizarre senile moment, snapping at the living room as though she thought it was her dinner. So we are wondering how long, exactly, she's going to be with us. And sympathetic though we are, it gets really frickin' tiresome to clean up dog urine several times a week. (And, yes, we are thinking of buying stock in Nature's Miracle. And possibly of dipping the entire rug in it at some point.)

Then, today, dog vomit joined the mix. Rocky wouldn't eat her breakfast, which is entirely out of character, and a few hours later I discovered why: puke spots in two places on the carpeted (enclosed) front porch and one on the living room rug. A little while later, I discovered an even better present: a giant puke spot on the couch. This is what we get for allowing the little princess to sit up here with us...

And now, as I sit reading my way through Catherine Newman's archives -- how did I not know she exists? -- the faint odor of puke is haunting me. I suspect the spot-cleaning did not work, which means I'll need to wash the slipcover, which means I'll discover exactly what horrors lurk beneath it. And given the frequency with which it's getting spit up upon these days, perhaps that's not a bad idea anyway.

All of which is to say that suddenly, astonishingly, Ess is the neatest non-adult-human creature in the house.