niko the fish dog

each and every morning at 7:30am on the dot, niko walks over to my bed and stares at me until his piercingly creepy gaze succeeds in waking me up. once i’m awake, he alternates his gaze between me and the door letting me know that he would like to be let outside. and once i open the door to let him out, he enthusiastically bolts down the front steps, hackles up, to investigate all urine splatters left by other animals in the wee hours of the morning. in reality, there really can’t be that many since we crawled into bed no earlier than 4:30am that same morning, but none the less, this is what he does. each and every morning.

on most days, he then proceeds to go for a morning jaunt while griffin takes this opportunity to release a quick pee before running back inside to the warmth of her bed for a few more hours of sleep. the last few mornings in particular, niko’s roving feet have taken him down to the boat launch where the local fishermen hang out on the weekends. this also happens to be the place where the local fishermen toss their fish guts onto the shore since it is against the law to toss fish remains back into the water. this is one law that niko seems to be in full support of, or that’s what i’m gathering from the smell of fish and presence of sticky fur he has returned with the last three mornings.

i’m sorry to say that dish soap doesn’t quite cut the fresh fish grease like it does off kitchen pans in the commercials, and let me assure you that the dial dish soap that is advertised as being used to remove oil spills from baby ducklings doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the fish oils that leak off of a rotting carcass.

but niko is happy. and my field assistant has a cold and stuffed sinuses at the moment, so she seems to be happy. so rather than attempting more washing events or restricting him from venturing down to the boat dock while the rest of us are still tucked into bed, we’ll just nickname him ‘niko the fish dog’ and be done with it. since we do live in a dirty little cabin and drive around in a slightly less than clean field truck, now seems about as good a time as any to go around smelling like a rotting fish carcass. and while the one side effect may be that i am not too keen to put fish on the dinner menu for the next little while, i’m sure niko is eating enough for the both of us and that for the next week or so, chicken will do just fine.