Her name is Roux. She is fabulous.
Our other dog, Beignet, has been a little jealous of this newest addition. Now he actually has to SHARE attention, which he is not a fan of.
Yesterday, Chavo and I were out of the apartment, and I decided not to take my purse. I've been on a weird anti-purse kick because I got tired of carrying around a 7 pound bag of my own trash. However, Beignet managed to find a Hershey bar, that I had gotten from a friend's wedding, in my purse. He also managed to eat the entire thing just before we got home.
I found maybe 1 1/2 pieces of the bar left, it was still wet, and Beignet had chocolate all over his face. Roux was across the room, acting like chocolate was beneath her. So it was no doubt that Beignet had consumed this entire chocolate bar alone. I grabbed my keys and practically flew to CVS and got the biggest bottle of peroxide I could find. Then I hauled butt back to the apartment.
And it. Was. On.
I yanked Beignet down the steps and onto the grass, and poured as much peroxide as I could down his throat. I pulled, pried, sat on, wrestled, and begged my poor baby to drink this peroxide and rid himself of a poison that would surely make him very sick, if not die. And he fought me, bit me, and scratched me to try to stop me from force-feeding him this peroxide. The panic in his eyes broke my heart. The poison was just so delicious.
I cried and cried and cried. What had I done to this poor dog? I love this dog so much, and it was my fault that he made himself so sick and miserable. I just wanted to erase the last hour and take my purse with me to wherever it was we went. Oh, and I locked us out of the apartment and had to carry Beignet to the office to get the spare key. All the office needed to give me a spare key was my drivers license, which happened to be in my pocket thanks to my anti-purse kick.
I laid on the ground, petting my poor retching dog, with snot running down my chin and sobbing. My neighbors think I'm a peach, just FYI.
After soaking both of us from head to toe with peroxide, both of us with stains of dog barf on us, we laid on the apartment floor and were miserable together. And I just started think about why Beignet would eat something so bad for him.
It was the same reason most of us do things that are bad for us. The poison is just so delicious. We fill ourselves up with poison until we are sick or dying. We kill ourselves with delicious poison, and we fight those who would do anything in their power to save us. We kick and bite and scratch at those that love us most. Those that would have, and have, died so that we don't have to hurt like this anymore.
But ridding yourself of the poison hurts. It sometimes hurts worse than the poison before it kills us. We don't like it, we don't want it. Just bring us what we think will make us feel better, the old poison, or a new one.
Beignet is fine. He didn't ingest enough chocolate to cause serious damage, but for a little while, I believed that I had grievously harmed a creature that has done nothing but loved me since he saw me. I know though, that no lesson was learned. He would eat that bar of chocolate and ten more if he could. I have to protect him from himself. But he is a dog, he doesn't know any better.
Do we know any better? Or are we just as bad as my chocolate-loving dog? How much poison will we ingest before we finally put it down and walk away?
