February 2013 — So guess what my dog ate tonight while I was at Smash Burger with the kids? Our “emergency go bag” food. You know the food you pack for nuclear holocaust? I don’t know if you have a go bag, but I take end of the world stuff very seriously (even though they call it something different on the Red Cross website), and I have a “go bag” with clothes, first aid supplies, tin foil blankets, etc. You want to hang with me in a crisis. I am seriously prepared.
Except that somehow the go bag fell off the high shelf I keep it on (you know in case of flood) and the dog managed to open it up (actually unzipped the zipper), pulled out the Ziploc bag with the emergency ration power protein bars (yes they are gluten free), and EAT TEN OF THEM. He ingested 4000 calories and 200 grams of fat and a LOT of protein. The kids weren’t even phased by this because this dog eats stuff all the time. They just said “huh. are you gonna call the vet now or are we just observing him for awhile to see how he does?” Observing. We are observing.
July 2012;
Husband, there’s good news and bad news. Good news is that I made you delicious pulled pork for dinner. Bad news is that the dog ate it off the counter so you’re having PB&J instead. The other bad news is that I figured out this is a great excuse and I can pretend I made you dinner all the time and blame the lack of food on the dog.
Oh, and then there was the time that I ordered a bunch of stuff from Doctors Foster and Smith – have you seen this catalog? Useful pet things. So I ordered a “cool mat”, because my dog is spoiled and he’s a hundred pound Bernese Mountain Dog living in NJ, where summer is way freaking hotter than Bern, Switzerland, where his DNA is from. So I open up the box when it arrives, and inside are four five-pound bags of birdseed. Yeah, that’s not mine. I don’t feed the birds. That Mary Poppins tuppence lady wouldn’t get any business from me. So, on the phone I explain to the Doctors that they shipped me someone else’s stuff and they’re gonna need to come pick that up. Because there is NO way I am lugging a five foot long box with twenty pounds of birdseed to a UPS store. No thanks. This takes longer than it should to get together, somehow the “I’m not doing work because you all messed up” argument isn’t one they like, but they eventually get it, and they promise to pick up the birdseed tomorrow. Excellent. Off the phone. Except now when I go back to the foyer where the birdseed box was, I notice there is a bag missing. Five pounds of birdseed has walked off….. and is under my dining room table, opened, and mostly missing. The dog ingested at least three plus pounds of BIRDSEED. Yeah, that’s not good. For one thing I’m going to need to hope the Doctors picking up the box don’t notice some of it is missing, and for another, I’m pretty sure birdseed is formulated for BIRDS, not dogs. Can they even digest this stuff? The answer to that is no, no they cannot. Because for the next three days the dog crapped out bird seed. This is one of the most disgusting things I’ve had to witness – picture a cannon going off and shooting off birdseed in a major explosion. Now picture this happening all over my lawn. Not get ready for it – guess who arrives? HUNDREDS OF BIRDS – EATING THE CRAPPED OUT BIRD SEED. For the first day I went out there and waved them away – “You DON’T want to eat THAT!” – waving my arms like a lunatic. But birds are stupid, and they will eat crapped out birdseed. And so I decided to let nature take it’s course and let nature be stupid. Dog and birds both.
