“Never trust a dog to watch your food”

Well I’m a bit late this week coming up with a blog, and admittedly I had some trouble coming up with a subject to write about. I just sat in front of my computer, staring at the screen, then it hit me. I don’t mean an idea popped into my head like some sort of fairy tale epiphany. No it was a tail of a completely different sort. It was my dog’s tail. The tail of my 100 lb. lab/newfoundland mix, right across my shins. Her name is Daisy and she is my Nemesis.

Now don’t get me wrong I’m not some sort of dog hater. I like dogs. In fact we have two other dogs that I love. They have little behavioral issues, but they are basically good dogs and they didn’t grow to the size of a cave troll before they were one.

Daisy, on the other hand, has several little quirks that make her a bit less than endearing. She sheds hair in chunks the size of a small rat, and her breath is only marginally better that the issues emanating from her other end. She sounds like an air raid siren every time we let her outside, thanks to separation anxiety, and when I let her in, she shows her joy by skidding through the house like a bull, knocking over chairs, trash cans and small children in the process.

Yes, Daisy is a little bundle of joy, but all these things do not compare to her real problem; Daisy likes to eat things.

She eats big things, little things, messy things, and weird things. I wonder if she was a goat in another life. She eats my daughter’s toys and seems particularly partial to her crayons, making poop day quite festive. She once ate a five pound bag of raw potatoes. Poop day that week was not quite so festive. She ate two pounds of skittles, then threw them up on our carpet in an all new rainbow of colors. She once managed to empty an industrial container of taco seasoning on the upstairs landing, making it forever resemble the sight of a mass murder. All these were great fun but my favorite was her most recent snack, a large canvas apron.

One day while we were gone she worked her way into one of the child/dog proof cabinets and pulled out our old BBQ apron. It was about four feet long and wide enough to cover a blimp so eating it was no small feat. She must have seen it as some sort of extreme food challenge, but she would have lost because the only thing she couldn’t finish was the patch right in the middle that said “Tabasco”. Must have been too spicy for her.

We were all a bit baffled when we came home and saw this remnant sitting on the kitchen floor. None of us wanted to believe she could have eaten the whole thing, but the lack of any other evidence told us she had indeed achieved the impossible.

When my wife left for the vet I explained that we really couldn’t afford to spend hundreds of dollars saving this dog. So two nights in the pet hospital and thousands of dollars later, I get my dog back, rearing to go, with an all new gut and an appetite to match. She’s home now, healthy as ever and I would like to say she has learned her lesson, but I doubt it. I can’t wait to see what she will eat next. Maybe a case of Easter egg dye, or perhaps an entire lazy-boy chair, I don’t know. Whatever it is I’m sure it will be an adventure and I will be back here to tell you the tale.