The Dog Who Ate Christmas
By
Theresa Willingham
Our dog recently ate 7 ounces of Baker's chocolate and a half-ounce of gourmet
ground
coffee and swallowed a marble, to boot. None of these things is part of
recommended canine diet.
Chocolate is toxic to dogs. A l-ounce square of Baker's chocolate can kill a
l0-pound dog, and it's a
wonder 7 ounces didn't do in our l5-pound Dachshund. Coffee holds the same
dangers.
The whys and wherefores of this accident are irrelevant.
Everyone feels badly enough already. The upshot of the whole thing is that the
vet bills totaled more
than $1,200. Coming on the heels of a rough year and a recent layoff, our little
dog effectively
ate Christmas.
On the way home from the vet with our pooch, groggy and
sore after surgery to remove the offending
blue marble, we joked gently about all the things that $1,200 could buy.
"Dexter ate a 24-inch flat screen LCD TV," my
husband said, laughing.
"He ate a lot of video games," my son chimed in.
"He ate a used car," one of my daughters added.
"A
very old and very used one," her father started to correct her.
But then we remembered we'd sold our old car for $300 and agreed that Dexter
had eaten the equivalent of
four old minivans.
Once
home, everyone fawned over our sick little dog without reproach, glad he
was home and on the mend,
The $1,200 and abandoned Christmas Gift ideas was irrelevant,
because, truth be told, we're still in debt to
Dexter for all he's done for us in the last couple of years.
We adopted him
as something of immersion therapy for our then-10-year-old son, who was
suffering from
an increasingly unreasonable and debilitating fear of dogs. Like many phobias,
cynaphobia, the medical term for
fear of dogs, doesn't require any negative experiences to exist. Our son's fears
had grown to such proportions
he couldn't walk down the street or ride his bike without heart-racing
anxiety on just seeing a dog.
When we adopted Dexter from a breed rescue group.
He was a year and a half old and stood a foot high
at the shoulders. Our daughters were delighted. Our son wouldn’t come out of
his room for three days. He
crawled across the tops of chairs to get to the table to eat and then crawled
back across them to return to
his room. On the fourth day, he sat on a stool and observed the dog who looked
back questioningly with those
irresistible dark brown eyes of his. At the end of a week, our son was
carrying the dog around the house.
After a few weeks, he was more comfortable with other dogs. Now, two years
later, he still doesn’t care for
large dogs, but he’s not fearful and he roams the neighborhood with a
confidence that’s carried over to other
areas of his life. He’s playing the piano, riding horses, doing well in
his studies and generally is happy-go-lucky
kid with a dog.
And that’s
just what Dexter did for our son. Each person in the family has a special and
unique relationship
with the dog. He plays gently and obligingly with our son. With my rambunctious,
outdoing daughter, he races
and wrestles. He leans against my quiet daughter like a cat, savoring her
strokes. And while originally suspicious
of men, Dexter adores my husband. They play wild games of chase and spend warm
devoted moments snoozing.
I had never
owned a dog before and was concerned about how long I could be away from home;
picking up
after the dog in addition to the rest of the family, who at least could flush;
annual shots; tags and whatever
other dog ownership issues were bound to occur. But I found that walks took on
new meaning with a little dog
trotting at my side. An occasionally bizarre meaning, as we sometimes stopped
every few feet so Dexter could
check what the girls called his “pee mail” at every post and trunk. But I
walk more briskly and more often now.
And coming home has never been so rewarding! No one else in the family greets me
so ecstatically and with such
genuine joy. Whether I’ve been gone l5 minutes or a day, Dexter is
enormously and unapologetically glad to see
me. He’s a cuddler, shamelessly squeezing between the desk and my lap while I
work, cruising from lap to lap
while we watch TV at night. He won’t crawl into his bed until the last
family member is in his or hers, and he
lies curled up beside us until morning, when he starts his equal opportunity
doting all over again.
He has taught us
patience, charity and the value of forgiveness. He never holds grudges, whether
his tail
is accidentally stepped upon, or he’s ordered out of the kitchen for being
underfoot. He certainly didn’t like
the vet’s office during the chocolate incident, but when we came to take him
home, he clearly didn’t associate
us with his aches and pains. Through the haze of drugs after his surgery,
he wagged his tail vigorously when he saw us.
Dogs aren’t
for the shallow and self-absorbed. They’re childlike but without the growing
cognizance and
independence of children. We are always their heroes; they’re always our
friends. Even with three children
and a quarter-century marriage, I didn’t fairly understand unconditional love
until Dexter came into our lives.
The obligation to life up to such devotion and loyalty can be a daunting task
and a humbling experience.
Yes, our dog ate
Christmas. But the gifts he’s given us are priceless and more enduring than
anything we
could ever put under the tree and more than we could ever repay.