I wish I had a picture to illustrate this story.
As you may know, our puppies (who are now 11 months old and weigh more than 70 pounds each) are a tiny bit destructive. OK, they're very destructive, given half a chance. It's a job to stay one step ahead of them as they figure out new ways to destroy whatever they can get their paws on. Or to keep them from poisoning themselves, as they attempt to find every example we own of Foods That Are Poison To Dogs. Such as: raisins, grapes, chocolate...basically everything kids love to eat! (I wonder sometimes if they're suicidal, but I've decided they're too dumb to actually do it on purpose.)
So the other evening Mel, on one of his scavenger hunts in the kitchen, discovered my baking cupboard - where I keep all kinds of baking stuff: flour, sugar, baking soda, cookie cutters, decorating icing, walnuts, raisins, baking chocolate....you see where this is headed, right?
I was looking for one of Hannah's socks, so I checked out Mel's kennel, where I am at least as likely to find her socks as I am in her sock drawer. I found an empty bag that used to be full of chopped walnuts, and a piece of a large tube of ready-to-use red decorating icing. Mel was back in the kitchen by this time, nosing his way into the baking cabinet again (it's one of those "lazy susan" type of corner cabinets under the counter). His legs and paws were a tell-tale pink color and he had this "yes-I'm-a-bad-dog-but-it-was-delicious-and-I-don't-feel-one-bit-guilty" look on his face. Mel was immediately banished out to the deck in the snow while I looked up "walnuts" and "icing" on the dogs-and-poison websites I have bookmarked on my computer. The first thing that came up was "WALNUTS ARE POISONOUS TO DOGS!", so I got some hydrogen peroxide and the bulb suction thingy we use to give it to the dogs as an emetic ("throw-upper").
Have you ever tried to force hydrogen peroxide into a dog's mouth? I called to Lindsey to help me, and he held him while I "treated" Mel. It seemed like we gave him half the bottle, a little at a time, giving him time to vomit between each dose. But it was actually only a few tablespoons. Finally his feast came back up. We turned on the light outside and it looked like there had been a murder on our deck. Imagine what a tube of red icing will look like once it comes back up. We let him back in right away so he wouldn't eat it again (dogs are just disgusting). And then my hero, Lindsey, went out with a shovel and a garbage bag to get rid of the evidence of the crime.
As I was reading more on the web about walnuts and dogs, it seems that it's not the walnuts that are poisonous to dogs; it's either the walnut shells or a mold or fungus that grows on the shells. So I probably didn't have to make Mel throw up. But at least making him throw up outside kept him from throwing up inside if the sugar overdose made him sick. And I wasn't feeling too sorry for him, anyway. Stay outta my baking supplies, Mel. I'd like to say he learned his lesson. But before we had a chance to put a lock on the cupboard, and were still just putting things in front of the cabinet (after taking all the chocolate and raisins out of it), I found an empty bag of peanut butter baking chips in his kennel. Labs are sweet, but they have to be the dumbest dogs in the world!
I debated taking a picture of Mel next to his masterpiece, but I decided that dog vomit was just too disgusting to put on the blog. You'll just have to use your imagination.
