Adventures in Babysitting

My parents are visiting my brother in Oakland right now, so I am babysitting all the animals. God help us all. They left early Thursday morning, and I have been alone with the dogs and bird since then. So far they are all still alive and I am counting down the minutes till my parents come home Tuesday night. To prepare me for taking care of the animals, my Mother made a list for me. Here it is:

Feed Pepper & Bear

½ cup in the morning (Bear and Pepper has their own food)
2 of ¾ cup at night with slices of turkey. My dogs are spoiled and cannot eat just plain dog food. They will actually just look at a bowl of plain dog food, sniff it, scoff at it, and then walk away.

Important: Please check and clean his back (behind) every time when he comes in the house after he poo poo. She is referring to my dog Pepper. A job that sucks, but must be done because sometimes his shit is running and gets all over himself. Lovely.

Medicine
For Pepper: 1 and ¼ tablet on Thursday and Monday night before you give him a dinner (wrapping a pill w/meat)

For Bear: 1 tablet of thyroids pills, 3 tablets of Medrol every morning. Bear has thyroid problems and allergies. I know, I know.

Tweetie:
1 spoon of his food every morning and bird gravel. The left over give to the bird outside.

Please change a newspaper at night time, and water if dirty.

Cover his cage at night and uncover the cage in the morning. I like how she bolded that part cause she thinks I will leave his cage covered up all day.

For the Bird Outside: 4 cups every morning. The bird seed in the container in the garage.

Call me if you have any questions. Thanks Baby.

These notes were added to the list and handwritten.

Fill the bowl of water under my sink’s bedroom.
Take trash out on Tuesday and Friday.
Close the gate at dinning room and living room.

It was great. That Wednesday night I was over at my parent’s house and my Mom just kept quizzing me and showing me where she kept everything for the dogs. As she is showing me Pepper’s medication, I ask, “So he gets these pills every night?” She screams, “Noooo! Only on Thursdays and Mondays. I have it in bold on the list! You’re going to OD him.” And then she just gives me this withering look of distrust and malice. She then says, “Have you been paying attention to anything?” All night she kept giving me that look, and now she’s all worried that I won’t do a good job of taking care of the babies.

The first morning went off without a hitch. I fed the dogs their breakfast, which they refused to eat so I had to give them slices of bread instead. I made the one mistake of forgetting to put my things up on higher ground where Bear can’t reach it. Bear has this problem of chewing anything left within his reach. Especially things that are soft. He for some reason loves toilet paper, and will eat the toilet paper off the roll, so my parents no longer keep toilet paper on the roll in the bathroom and instead place it on top of the toilet. I had brought over a new bag of overnight pads and forgot to put them away. When I came home, I went upstairs to change and found that Bear had eaten all of them except for three! I am screaming at him, “Why would you do that? What is wrong with you? Am I going to have to take you to the hospital now to pump your stomach or will this just come out naturally?” Freaking Mutt. I have no idea why he does this.

That has been the only really big incident. My parents have called me everyday to check in on the dogs to make sure they are still alive. They say they miss me, but that’s complete bullshit. They just don’t trust me alone with the dogs and bird.

I really do love my dogs; I just forgot how much work it is to take care of them. I forgot how needy they are and how they really are almost like kids. I feel like I have to constantly entertain them and make sure they aren’t missing my parents too much. I know they will be ecstatic when they come. I know I will be.