Living With Oreo

I used to love spring. It was a time of rebirth and renewal and all that good poetic stuff. More daylight, more sun and warmer temperatures. What's not to like?

Well, thanks to Oreo, spring has become a bit of a chore. Actually, it has become two chores. The first has to do with what happens to the snow and the ground in the spring. That's right; the snow disappears and the ground turns to mud.

So when Oreo goes on a long walk or even takes a short romp in the backyard, he comes back in the house loaded with mud. His paws are muddy, his belly is muddy and, if he has decided to do a bit of digging, his chin is muddy, too.

What this entails is stopping Oreo at the door, holding him by the collar and attempting to clean off his paws and anything else bearing dirt. Given Oreo's reluctance to cooperate in this process, I usually have about thirty seconds to get as much mud off of him as I can.

Needless to say, this method has limited success. After the wipe down, Oreo proceeds to walk through the kitchen, the living room and the dining room. And if there was any doubt as to where he went, all I have to do is follow the paw prints throughout the house.

And when we follow the paw prints, we discover another springtime gift from Oreo: little clumps of black or white fur. One of the major advantages of owning a Portuguese Water Dog is that they supposedly don't shed. And, in fact, they don't shed. But apparently every spring they do molt.

For the last few weeks, we have been awash in Oreo fur. Every room in the house has its share of little fluffs of fur left behind by our new pet. We have quickly become accustomed to picking up these little gifts as we walk about the house. And Cheryl's once-weekly vacuuming of the living room and front hallway has turned into a daily chore.

Hopefully, this molting process is temporary and will stop. By then, however, spring will have passed. What was once a hopeful season has now become a canine-centric series of cleanup chores.

One final new sign of spring is what appears in the backyard when the snow melts. Although Cheryl is fairly good about winter poop patrols, it's impossible to find or retrieve all of Oreo's wintertime productions. Luckily, this spring cleaning task is not my responsibility.

Until the ground outside dries out, the molting stops and all the poop is found and discarded, we are destined to have rags, mops, brooms, vacuum cleaners and pooper scoopers close at hand at both the front and back doors. The once golden days of spring seem to have lost just a bit of their lustre.