In the next few weeks, I will be writing a series on the various misfortunes and laughable moments of babysitters. I have been babysitting since I was in the 6^th grade and I have made wonderful memories with so many great children. I have also collected the hilarious stories of past babysitters and would love to make you laugh out loud right along with me.

Each of the stories will be written in first person and names will be changed in attempts to protect the identities of the people involved. This first story is actually comprised of two different instances, yet both star the family pet. A pet can create a lot of havoc, and this is no strange idea to babysitters.

The first story is quite short and simple. One day, when I was about 14 years old, I was watching a family of two, when I heard an awful retching sound. I quickly glanced back and forth between the children, but neither one of them looked the least bit sick. They were happily continuing their games as if they hadn’t even noticed the noise. That’s when I remembered… they had a cat. I noticed the bedroom door ajar, and as I gently opened it wider, I saw the cat (we'll name him Milo) staring at his once eaten lunch. Milo had vomited on the bed. I froze. He seemed to be acting fine now, but just for safe measure I locked him in the bathroom. I then rushed back to the bedroom. I tried my best to get all of the vomit off of the bed and then took the sheets off. The mother returned shortly after that and, lucky for me, was very understanding of the cat situation. I often recounted cat vomit as one of the most disgusting things I had ever smelt.

Flash forward 4 years and I realized there is something so much worse. Over the summer of 2015, I watched two different families. Some days I would have two or three kids, and some days I would have five. They were all really well-behaved so I never really had many issues with the children, but I did have an incident with their cute puppy. This puppy was still in the potty training stages, so I was used to there being messes to clean up. So when one of the kids yelled, “eeewwww!!!”, I didn’t think it would be too bad, but as I turned my head, I gasped.

To my horror, I witnessed the poor little puppy (we’ll call him Otis) having #2 on the crisp white carpet… except, he was having a little bit of tummy troubles. in other words, Otis had some hard core diarrhea. The children then immediately gravitated towards it, intrigued by the consistency of poor Otis’ poo. After running back to the scene with towels and cleaning spray for pets in hand, I find them all gagging from the retched smell. It was quickly filling the room. I was not about to clean dog diarrhea AND child vomit, so I quickly sent them to the backyard to play while I dealt with cleaning the carpet.

How do you get dog diarrhea out of carpet? Great question! I had no idea. I called my mother panicked to see if she knew what to do, but she had never had to endure that before. I was on my own. By the time I had finished cleaning the spot, I was ready to get outside in the fresh air with the kids. If you have never had the pleasure of smelling dog diarrhea before, I don’t recommend it.

I often laugh at these stories because of how crazy and panicked I felt at the time, but in each of these I have grown more confident in myself. I can look back to these memories and feel more in control when handling unfamiliar situations. Babysitting can provide a lot of life skills, even through watching the family pet.