Let me tell you about my dear Ben. So many adjectives describe him: faithful, handsome, yellowest of the yellow, passionate [about eating], ready to retrieve [sporadically].... One adjective that really is not where he excels: intelligence.
And so, let's talk about the smartest thing he has ever done.
Yesterday evening a wonderful saint from our church offered to watch Tucker and Molly so I could go to a Christmas party the same night that Austin needed to be at our church's vestry meeting. As our friend was pulling up, we lost electricity (with Tucker in the bath, of course).
Under the cloak of darkness, two frazzled parents failed to see that the playdoh was still on Tucker's table. Keep in mind Tucker hadn't actually been playing with the playdoh, and it wasn't technically even out; it was still safely enclosed in the ziplock bag that it had arrived in (a gift from Tucker's teachers), with two cookie cutters firmly lodged in its center. But it was at canine mouth height.
Fast forward four hours.
Ben's water bowl is strangely empty. He keeps needing to go outside. He drinks compulsively when we put water back into his bowl. And, oh yeah... where is that playdoh? No longer on the table.
Austin and I looked at each other with sinking hearts, hoping to spend the night sleeping in bed instead of either on the couch or at the emergency vet. The last time Ben ate playdoh, he ate only part of a batch, and it was not his finest moment nor our finest night. This time, the missing playdoh amounted to a batch and a half, with two plastic cookie cutters in the middle of it, encased in a plastic bag. The outlook for the night looked dim.
As we trudged up to find our toothbrushes and decide our next move, I saw it. A glorious ripped-open bag of pink glitter playdoh staining the couch in my office. I haven't been so excited to see such a gross mess in a long time. I looked at Ben with admiration and sheer joy at this strange new development in his character: self-control.
Ben has never, ever, ever failed to eat something that he could possibly get down his gullet. Socks. Plastic bags. Corn cobs. Dirt. Trash. Kleenex. Baby bibs. Playdoh. Whatever.
My heart swelled with pride that my 10 year-old dog finally said no, that even in the midst of the kill he could look at a bag of pink glitter playdoh with two plastic cookie cutters and think: maybe it is not in my best interest to eat all of this. It was epic.
Of course, he ate enough to have horrible diarrhea that required three passes at cleaning the kitchen floor this morning to make the area livable again. But at least we all got some sleep (and he didn't die of kidney failure or a digestive obstruction).
