The Curious Incident of the Spicy Mud in the Springtime- A Tale of Horror!

Happy Halloween to all!

My mom owns and operates a dairy farm in rural Vermont. This is the story of one day at the farm with Winnie, my young nephews, my niece, my boyfriend Andy, and a large pit of cow manure…

The Beginning

It was a beautiful spring day while we were visiting the farm. My nephews and niece were at Grammie’s house too. We all decided to take a walk through the meadow above the barn to get some fresh air. Winnie was excited to be free and off the leash.

While walking through one field my youngest nephew, Ethan, looked down at a big fat cow patty and said, “Mud!”  We all giggled and I replied, “Yep! That’s what you call Spicy Mud.” Ethan grinned and dutifully repeated, “Spicy Mud!”

The Fall

On our return from our walk, my other nephew, Andrew, wanted to show Andy where a good photo of the nearby mountains could be taken. This path took us around the barn…

As you can imagine, on a farm there is a great deal of spicy mud all over the place. What you may not know if you haven’t been on a dairy farm is that there is one big pit, full of liquid spicy mud. This is called the manure pit.

As we looked out on the beautiful view of the mountains, I didn’t notice that Winnie had veered off course- and then straight into the pit of spicy mud. I turned around to see her up to her shoulders in poop and looking understandable wild eyed.

For 30 seconds or so the whole group was thrown into a panic. There was yelling and shouting, which drove Winnie further away from the edge of the pit where she had fallen in. She was at least 3 feet away and the pit is four to five feet deep. Visions of diving in to save my dog ran through my head…

Luckily, with a little cajoling, Winnie was able to doggie paddle back over to the edge of the pit. I had to reach in and lift her out, by her harness.

Not. Chocolate.

And this is where the story gets really scary. We were all laughing so hard at the poop dipped dog that she thought we wanted to play. This led a frightening and hilarious scene of a 12 pound shih-tzu covered in liquid poo, chasing 2 adults, one teenager and 2 small children around a barnyard for 10 minutes. It was like a scene from Jaws, but slightly less dangerous.

Oooohhh boys!
I think she's come back for her noon feeding.
Jaws, 1975

The Ending

Finally, Winnie seemed to exhaust herself and the rest of our little gang got to escape into the house. It was up to me to figure out how to clean her up, while getting a minimal amount of poop on me. You’ll understand if I leave out the gory details of the bath (picture a wet dog, shaking water and other less pleasant things on me). Hours later, as we drove home, despite my best efforts, the stink of spicy mud permeated the car, Winnie lay snoring on my lap as though this were the end to any other day at Grammie's house.

Let this terrifying tale be a warning for others…off leash freedom for your dog should be monitored closely at all times.