I was reading a site about basset hound rescue and care and came across something about anal sacs, which sometimes become impacted and need to be emptied (you hold the tail up and squeeze and whatever it is, which the site admitted was "smelly," comes out.
That took the bloom off the rose somewhat.
But Clove said this happens to their dog too and they have the vet take care of it. That sounds reasonable to me. The next impediment was one of the site's dog-readiness questions: Is the decision to adopt a basset hound a unanimous one?
It's really not. RDC wants an eventual German Shepherd because he knows to what degree their obedience and discipline can be honed. I say, and he knows, that we haven't the space, inside or out, for a Shepherd. That's why I downgraded from Labrador Retriever, myself. At basset hound, I want a used one, older, to ease myself into a parent relationship with a dog, and he suggests that a puppy is more trainable and will have grown up with a cockatiel and won't have emotional trauma.
The dog's been shelved for now (in the public dog library). Alas.
This morning, with Blake on my shoulder, I scraped and spackled more of the watercloset. There's more I won't do until I have convenient hot water again, and some of the walls need joint compound, spackle's tougher cousin, but I could do some. I spackled and then I trimmed some 90-degree angles where a previous painter had let a long bead of paint dry, and I scraped the scar of a one-time phone line (?) off the ceiling. Spackling is boring (Blake just preened), but the scraping made noises that he had to imitate.
A basset hound would not be able to help like that.