Karma is the business

‘Cause karma is my boyfriend

Karma is a god

Karma is the breeze in my hair on the weekend

Karma’s a relaxing thought.

– ‘Karma’ by Taylor Swift

Karma returned to bite me on the backside last weekend and it was nothing akin to – as Taylor had erroneously suggested – a breeze in my hair.

Of course and there’s nothing surer… Waffle had a paw in the eventual calamity. And yet, as I stood in that evening’s drizzle, cold and tired and mentally worn out, I could only conclude that I had to take my karmic medicine. I had to suck it up and look happy. I had only myself to blame.

Rewind a few weeks and on a Saturday afternoon I was languishing on the sofa flicking through my phone, entirely oblivious to karma’s foibles.

Cruising through TikTok, I stumbled onto a video with a catchline, ‘How to permanently become an outside dog.’ This snagged my attention because Waffle had been threatened with that very fate the previous evening when he was once again, whining in the wee hours.

The ‘How to permanently become an outside dog’ video was a CCTV capture and it showed a man walking along an urban street. He stopped at a wall, glanced around, dropped his cacks and then proceeded to ‘do his business,’ eventually walking away from a veritable mound of ‘business.’

Moments later (although it may have been longer; the CCTV could have been skipped ahead), two people entered the frame with a small spaniel-type dog.

As they were walking past the mound of business the dog immediately lay down and began to roll around in said business. I recalled the tagline: ‘How to permanently become an outside dog’ and despite the awfulness of the incident, I couldn’t help but laugh.

Fast-forward to this weekend and rather than languishing on the sofa, I was cooking in the kitchen. I didn’t notice at all but karma was blowing around the eaves of the house like a promise.

Closely associated with the idea of rebirth in many schools of Indian religions (namely Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism), karma has been adopted in Western popular culture, insofar as the events which happen after a person’s actions may be considered natural consequences of those actions.

“Whoooosh,” went the unheard promise at the eaves.

A shout from outside made me turn from the kitchen sink. The crew had returned with Waffle and even at the briefest glance, I could see something was amiss. The front door opened and then I heard, “Don’t let him into the house!”

Oblivious to this command, the littlest human in the house somehow managed to allow the hound to gain entry.

“Tell him to come out again!” This time the shout was in urgency.

More words were said thereafter, though they cannot be repeated herein.

By the time I had dried my hands and made it to the front door, there was a big, brown streak on the wall inside. “I don’t like the look of that,” I told myself. As to Waffle, he was standing forlorn at the step, surrounded by frowning fambly members. In super-quick fashion, it was relayed how, during their walk, Waffle had happened on a large splat of cow dung on the road and, like the spaniel-type dog in the video, had proceeded to roll around in it.

“Whoooosh,” went the promise at the eaves and by now, I was beginning to understand.

A closer (but not too close) examination of His Hairyness showed that there were indeed large patches of greeny-brown gunk across his sides and up his neck. That explained the muck on the wall inside.

As the instigator of the karmic backlash, it naturally fell to me to remedy the situation and so, ordering the hound to follow, he and I repaired to the backyard whereupon I turned the hose on and gave him a good drenching. A good dose of spongy suds followed then another drenching, then another dose of suds and then a third drenching. By that stage both he and I were chittering with the cold but miraculously, the stench of manure had gone.

“Well, if that’s the worst thing that happens today, it won’t be so bad,” the littlest humans said, handing me a towel. Anna had heard me say this previously, from time to time but at that moment, standing in the evening drizzle, cold and tired and wondering if I was having olfactory hallucinations about cow manure, I wasn’t in the form.

“It could always start raining dung,” I said. “That would be worse.”

After drying Waffle off, I couldn’t help but remember the video of the man in the CCTV coverage and his business and the spaniel. Could my laughing at the two people and their misfortunate dog have worked as a catalyst for karma to come calling and return the anti-favour to me? Too much of a coincidence? A glitch in the Matrix?

What goes around, comes around, they say.

The only question now is whether Waffle will permanently become an outside dog.

I can’t say. But the day’s not over yet.