I MEANT THE KITCHEN OPENING!!!

My friend Homa is a first time dog owner. Actually she is a first time dog Aunt, I guess. Her sister has just taken in a stray Pomchi or Chihuahua/Pomeranian mix. Its a teeny little puffball dog, and I have seen pictures of and is as cute as can be. But, Zain and Homa are too funny because they've never really done the whole dog thing before. They are dog virgins, if you will. I am a long time dog lover (which sounds gross after referring to them as virgins) and owner, so I get a lot of the question calls. The Dog Whisperer, I am not, but I can hold my own with most questions. That is, until Monday's question came along.

Homa calls me and asks how you know when a female dog is in heat. Well, I think there is one pretty clear symptom, but I've never had a female dog, and I "fix" my animals pretty young (thanks to Bob Barker and his "help control the pet population" advice). The one female cat I had did not go into heat, because we spayed that swamp cat at birth, basically. So what did I turn to? I googled (Hello, my name is Lynn and I am a Google addict). What did people do when there was no Internet? That's what I want to know. I'd never be able to find out about dogs in heat, self diagnose my medical problems, shop... post this blog? I would spend my days churning my own butter I guess. Or, perhaps I would start checking off a few things on my to-do list that just never gets to-done. But, anyway. Back to the dog in heat. I google, get the goods and call Homa back with the 411. She then passes the info on to her sister. Then, she calls back.

Homa tells me that per her sister, the dog has started oozing. Eww, right? We females all do it, but for some reason when discussing a dog, I lose all sympathy and get a little icked out. The point of the call, though, was not a gross factor but that they need to gate her into the kitchen. "How do we do that?" Homa asks. I think for a minute and say, "How big is the opening?" Homa thinks for a minute and whatever came out of her mouth is still a blur to me. I think my mind immediately shut off, and a split personality developed in me to protect my real self from hearing such destructive information. I was going to name my new one Sasha Fierce, but Beyonce already took that name, is instead it was Myrtle. So, Myrtle listened as she begins to explain the oozing and the size of the opening its coming from and all the Lynn personality hears is "YUCK YUCK YUCK YUCK" until I can focus enough to yell over her dog anatomy describing voice "I MEANT THE KITCHEN OPENING!!!"