Hey everyone,

Owning a St Bernard comes with health risks.. Please observe the following post before making this life-changing decision.

Farts.

Sometimes they are so pungent that I am worried that the wallpaper will peel itself from the walls in a desperate attempt to escape the room. Noses get buried in the collars of t-shirts and the possible guilty parties are determined from the mammals in the room (and in the case of our tortoise, reptiles too). However, there's only one obvious culprit for a fart this bad: Mallory the St Bernard puppy. How something so young and cute can produce something so utterly vulgar is baffling to all involved in this almost life-changing event.

^{I look cute but i just guffed}

"He's a fucking rotter", comes the muffled cry from my mouth buried inside my t-shirt. It's not only disgusting, but it's hilarious. He makes me feel like such a proud dad, even though genetics have nothing to do with this. This would be a definite "dutch oven" moment if I happened to be in bed right now. The wife would probably kill me though; she is already close enough to blaming me for every fart anyway, but I always have the option of passing the buck to Mallory, even for any air biscuits that I have floated myself.

And no, it's not just one ripper. It's like a continuous stream of gas emanating from his arsehole over the period of a few hours. "He's sprung a leak or summat", says the wife. "Stick a plug in it or something will you". If this was a flammable gas, we (and maybe the whole street), would have been evacuated. But it isn't us that is being evacuated, it's the bowels of this lovely little canine.

Constantly.

While we are watching The Great British Bake Off.

If this is what "smellivision" is, then these contestants need to use fresher eggs.

Excrement

House training is the other thing that we are undertaking at the moment. The amount of unexpected warm presents that we are receiving is slowly reducing, but initially, if you wanted to go into the kitchen in the middle of the night you would feel somewhat akin to a naval minesweeper floating it's way through the ocean, waiting for the explosion to occur between your naked toes.

^{I am outside here, but I prefer to crap in your kitchen}

Like I said though, things are getting better. Daily piss puddles are reducing and I think we have only had one daytime piddle in the last week, discovered during a flossing session with my daughter (the dance, not the dental hygiene routine). Nearly went arse-over-tit I did. That'll teach me for showing off.

One other thing to mention is the "happy piss", as I like to call it. Turns out that puppies like to empty their bladders when they get excited. That's fair enough at home; sometimes I come home and he pisses on my shoes cos he's excited to see me. I've stopped caring. What isn't cool is when you are out walking him and someone comes over to see the "oh my, he is soooo cute" puppy, only to get a podiatric pee shower as a result. Not so cute now that you have his piss on your shoes is he?

Shoelaces.

I'm not talking about the ones on your shoes (which may or may not be covered in dog piss). Oh no, the shoelaces that I am talking about are far more sinister (well as sinister as canine bodily fluids get). The problem you get with jowelly (is that a word?) dogs is that saliva builds up on the inside of the mouth and then these strings start to hang down from little skin-flap slides. Some of these spit-candles, even at this young age, have been measured to be nearly 6 inches long. And that's no male exaggeration.

^{Look at this tongue... imagine the drool i can produce from that}

I haven't worn a truly clean pair of jeans for at least a month now thanks to this.

We knew about the saliva, that's a known thing with St Bernards (everyone has watched Beethoven right?). What no-one said anything about was how the candles get mixed with food to form a fast setting kibble-spit cement style cocktail which leaves crusty lines all over your clothes. I look like a tramp who has spilt mustard all over him and can't be arsed to clean it up.

Other than all of this, having Mallory as part of our family is absolutely joyous and I wouldn't change it for the world.

I'd like to nominate a couple of good old Brits, @raj808 and @abh12345.

Thanks for reading

Mark