How My Puppy Kept Me On the Toes By Completely Covering the Kitchen in Glitter

Diary of Kuzo: The Glitter Bomb

I awoke to the smell of glitter.

Bleary eyed and yawning, I stumbled downstairs. The morning rays were diffracted by the antique glass windows of my old home. The diffracted light painted the walls orange and yellow and red.

I had coffee on my mind, but all I could smell was glitter.

“That’s odd,” I thought. “What’s with all the glitter?”

I made my way through the living room and into the kitchen where Kuzo slept.

We hadn’t bought a kennel for Kuzo. Instead we bought a pop-up doggy tent.

My kids liked it.

“Dad, it’s like he’s an explorer!” Avril said.

“It’s like every night when he goes to bed,” added Sienna, “he’s pitching his tent on the peak of Mt. Everest!”

As I approached the tent, the scent of glitter became even more powerful.

“Oh no,” I said. “No, no, no.”

I opened the gate that we’d been forced to install to keep Kuzo from eating the whole house.

A dog needs boundaries.

He needs a place to go and chill.

He needs an area where he can’t possibly destroy anything.

Kuzo had heard me approach and I could sense he was excited. Inside the tent, his tail started to thump against the fabric.

“Thump, thump, thump.”

Then he started to scratch the door.

“Scratch, scratch, scratch.”

For a moment I stopped and, not for the first time, wondered what strange and magical material they’d used to construct that tent. It had already endured months of doggy claws and doggy teeth and endless other forms of doggy abuse without showing so much as a scratch.

If Captain America showed up to throw his Vibranium shield at the tent, my money would be on the tent.

I could see through the mesh that Kuzo was happy to see me.

His teeth flashed white.

His tongue lolled out to the side.

His eyes said, “Is it play time? Finally!”

And every last inch of him was covered in glitter.

Apparently a glitter bomb had been detonated in his tent during the night. Who knows how many hours Kuzo had spent rolling around in glitter?

It was everywhere!

“Oh Kuzo!” I said.

I still wanted coffee, but it was no longer possible to make me more alert.

I’d been awakened.

Kuzo had thought fit to plan my morning for me.

I would be cleaning up glitter.

There was glitter in the doggy bed, glitter in the tent, glitter in his fur, glitter beneath his claws.

“Scratch, scratch, scratch!”

Kuzo was making his wishes known. “Come on, let me out, it’s time to play! Yee-haw!”

It was still early, and though I thought I was thinking clearly, I hadn’t had my coffee yet.

In hindsight, the best course of action would have been to drag the whole tent outside.

I should have picked it up, Kuzo and all, kicked open the door, and dumped it out into the yard.

But I hadn’t had my coffee.

So instead of doing the right thing, I reached down and zipped open the tent.

Kuzo emerged in a ball of energy and a cloud of glitter.

Glitter spilled out onto the floor.

I gagged. Realizing I’d made a mistake, I rushed to open the door. “C’mon Kuzo, C’mon boy!”

But now that the door was open, Kuzo couldn’t be rushed. He smiled, and then he stretched, putting his two front paws down and reaching forward. They call it ‘downward dog’ for a reason.

When he was done, Kuzo yawned.

Then he gave me a look that said, “I’ll be right with you boss, there’s just one more thing.”

That’s when I recognized the full extent of my mistake.

Everything went in slow motion.

I tried to move, tried to stop what I knew was going to happen.

Kuzo was covered in glitter, and he wanted it off.

There’s no way of stopping a dog once he begins to shake.

It’s a curious natural ability that a dog has to expel water and other contaminants from his coat. He braces and starts to twitch and you can see particles of water and debris fly off in all directions.

If you’re standing close, you’re going to get covered.

I was close.

Painters should attempt to replicate this ability with technology.

They could build a device that they set in the middle of a room. With the push of a button, it could distribute a perfect, uniform coat of paint to cover everything all in a matter of seconds.

Kuzo got himself in shake stance, and he let the glitter fly.

Glitter flew into the air. It flew onto the refrigerator. It flew into the sink. It flew onto the stove. It flew into my mouth.

Everything was covered in glitter.

“No!” The word died on my lips.

“Okay,” Kuzo seemed to say. “I’m ready to go outside now!”

“Get the dog outside.” A voice said inside my mind. “Don’t think of anything else right now, just get the dog outside, now!”

I got the dog outside.

Then I went back inside and got the tent. I put the tent outside. Kuzo started to bark at it like he’d never seen it before.

Then I took off all my clothing and threw that outside.

“This is a fun game!” Kuzo said. “Everything is outside!”

I went inside, grabbed a disinfecting wipe, and began to wipe everything.

“Get the glitter!”

“But there’s glitter everywhere!”

“I don’t care, just get the glitter!”

I don’t know how much time passed. It might have been hours. It might have been days. All I know is that eventually, my wife came downstairs and said, “Hey dear is the coffee... What the heck happened?”

She found me sitting in my underwear, my face smeared with glitter, desperately trying to clean the whole kitchen with a disinfectant wipe.

“Oh, good morning dear, sorry, I forgot to make coffee. I got distracted by the glitter bomb.”

She could only stand and stare.

Our whole world was covered in glitter. She sat down beside me, and the two of us tried to make sense of our new reality.

Pet ownership provides you with numerous opportunities to rethink your life.

Everything in this story is recounted exactly as it happened.

Only, as you might have guessed, it wasn’t glitter.