For about a month I’ve been itching to visit an antique store that is closed on the only two days of the week I don’t work.

I like to occasionally engage in the perusing of that which is classic and timeless other people’s long-ago used junk, mostly because I have grand aspirations of one day finding the essential addition to my someday-to-be-owned home and garden. Also, ever since my lovely and creative great aunt demonstrated that antique items do indeed make many a splendid and eccentric garden, I’ve been convinced that I too will one day stumble upon such a perfect addition to my still non-existent backyard landscape. Also, tomorrow my mom celebrates being (slightly) older, and grows one bountiful garden herself. So, basically, I was thinking that my latent desire to visit the aforementioned Place To Buy Old Things, coupled with the ulterior motive of gift shopping, granted me the green light and full speed ahead! to entertain thoughts of purchasing myriad priceless items collecting dust since 1912.

The woman owning the particular shop of which I was antiquing was friendly, and knowledgeable, and had amassed quite a large collection of dishes, lamps, mirrors, perfumes, jewelry boxes (one was comprised entirely of jade, and was gorgeous, and was found to cost 150 dollars, and was promptly put back on the shelf from whence it came), as well as postcards, pictures, and maternity clothes circa 1900-1924. She also had an adorable little puppy (that looked pretty much like this little guy) who, upon my entering the store, threw his open mouth upon my shoes, apparently, as the owner informed me, because “Cookie loves shoes. Especially black shoes.” Um. Ok.

Cookie was cute enough, and although him mowing on my shoe as I was attempting to uncover the much anticipated essential antique was slightly problematic, mostly because I was afraid I was going to step on the poor little guy and crush him into tiny Cookie crumbs, and also because I had snagged my shoe on his still attached leash at least three times, and was thus traipsing dangerously close to Tripping And Causing A Scene stage (the gracefulness, it typically only lasts about ten minutes when tested), I enjoyed his attentive company.

That is, until Cookie decided to leave me a gift. On the carpet. On the carpet directly behind where I had been standing for about ten minutes, looking through books and albums that came over on The Mayflower, and not hearing, nor expecting, Cookie dropping a (rather impressively large for such a small pup) load and then exiting, Stage Left before politely informing me not to step backward, nor left, nor right (I told you, impressively large, and extending both east and westward of my current geographic position) before looking down so as to miss soiling my shoes in his poop.

Today marks the second time I have stepped on dog poo INDOORS because I did not expect such an encounter with the brown stuff, being falsely of the mindset that the word “inside” usually means “not a public park, a backyard, or outside at all,” and thus, while inside said antique store, my Crap In The Grass radar was left in the “off” position, because, well, I was INSIDE, and incorrectly assumed all entities, canine and human alike, to be appropriately house-broken.

The first mushy gift I ever encountered indoors was left inconspicuously on a hardwood living room floor of a woman’s house The Future Interior Designer and I were house-sitting for a night. A large pile of WARM crap in which I so horribly immersed my entire right BARE FOOT, a warm pile left courtesy of one hyperactive pug pup named Muldoon who looked just like this. Just like the picture, Muldoon’s tongue was also perpetually out of his mouth. That is, until we kicked him and shipped him off to South Korea.

Just kidding. Even after that particular Close Encounter Of The Shitty Kind I still wanted to take Muldoon home with me.

But Cookie, Cookie can just continue to so adequately guard his lace and china-laden abode, with all of his shoe swallowing and random load-dropping, fully trusting that never again will I wonder what gems I’m missing in that particular antique store.