Wine for Doggie Doo

Dealing with any baby naturally entails a lot of encounters with matter of the fecal variety. Babies poop. A lot, I've heard.

So it is with puppies. It is not so much the number of poops our beloved Tuco does per day as it is the quantity of matter per poop. We are literally talking piles of poop. For a rather small 30-pound dog, he must generate his own body weight in poop every day.

And these are not what I would consider small-dog bowel movements; one such poop looked like it should have emerged from a 1200 pound walrus. Passers-by looked at us as if to say, "wow, that's one big turd!"

The euphamism "building a log cabin", is not just a catchy phrase. He seriously could be living in a poop-house of his own making by now.

Then there is the whole business of his being afraid of his own poop. I think we have finally cracked this mystery: sticks and mulch. In his poop.

We cannot seem, no matter how hard we try, to make him not eat every stick and piece of mulch he can find. This wouldn't be such a problem if not for the fact that these items don't digest in his tummy. They do, in fact, pass right through. Literally, you can see them right there in his poops, whole hunks of sticks and mulch.

Those bits must hurt like hell coming out, so I can hardly blame him for trying to get as far away from them as he can.

While dealing with doggie poop is not always fun, dealing with baby poop is not much better. People will comment that the advantage babies have over dogs is that they eventually deal with their own poop, while dogs pretty much leave their owners grabbing handfuls of the stuff many times a day for the next 15-18 years. And this is unfortunately true.

However, I must say that by far the most terrifying poop encounter I have ever had was with an infant for whom I was babysitting.

I was in my early twenties, and the baby was only a few days old, and his mom and I were there with him, at his changing table.

The diaper was off, so he was bare butt to the breeze, when suddenly, there was a poop explosion. Really there's no other way to describe it. Poop just projectile erupted from his bum, and sprayed everything in a ten-foot radius. His mother and I both shrieked in shock and jumped back to what we imagined was a safe distance.

The baby bicycled his legs, cooed and looked delighted.

His mother and I stood, frozen, looking at him, and then at each other in muted horror. Then slowly, very slowly, we inched back closer to him.

It was like we were both members of a bomb squad, approaching an explosive device: had the bomb fully discharged its load? Was there going to be a secondary explosion? What about shrapnel? Could we approach now? What could be considered a safe distance? I for one, wanted to put my flack suit back on, or at the very least, a Haz Mat suit.

I distinctly remember thinking, $10/an hour is not enough for this.

I almost hesitate to recommend a wine this week, lest it be known at the dog-doo wine, but recommend I shall.

The wine for this week is a 2006 Kumeu River Estate Chardonnay from New Zealand.

Now i confess, I am not normally a fan of New World Chardonnays. That buttery, oaky thing is just not for me.

But this Chard is different: it's ripe and tropical with peachy, nutty minerality. It's super refreshing and bright and kind of reminds me of a rich Sauvignon Blanc. It's really nice with seafood.

So throw away that poop bag, pour yourself a glass of Kumeu River and enjoy!