Saturday, January 26, 2013

If You Give A Dog A Latte'

They say that dogs have owners and cats have staff. 

Those people don't have my dog.

Jessie was a rescue dog we got while we lived in Smalltown, New Mexico.  Daughter named her Jessie after the cowgirl on Toy Story.  She is part poodle, part terrier which really means full mutt.  I tell everyone who has never seen her that she looks a lot like Benji.  Only Benji solved crime.

This dog doesn't solve crime.

The vet classifies Jessie as "tri-color" = brown, black, and white.  Mostly brown.  Sometimes there is more brown or black depending on how much mud she has on her. 

The poodle part of her has curly hair that GROWS LIKE A WEED and the terrier part of her makes the growing hair wiry.  Not long after we got her Hubs even noticed that Jessie actually has two types of coat. One coat in the front and one in the back.  (I'm not even kidding.)  We also noticed that her head never grew at the same rate as her body.  (Also not kidding.)

Jessie is "one of those dogs."  Sweet as can be and eager to please, but Lord help her.  If something weird is going to happen, it is to her.

In her nearly three years of life on this planet, Jessie has managed to live a lifetime of experiences.

1. Right after we got Jessie, she had a strange high fever which was misdiagnosed as distemper.  We had just lost another rescue dog to distemper and were devastated. Thankfully, she was okay.

2. While still a puppy, she slowly chewed away parts of the sofa.

3.  She almost swallowed a people pill.  I didn't know the "almost" part and called the vet on a Sunday morning to learn that I needed to induce vomiting on a dog.  I hope to never have to do that again. Not fun for me or the dog.  We later found out that she had spit out the people pill.

4.  Following an induction of vomiting, Jessie revealed the parts of the sofa she had chewed.

5.  One time what I thought was the evidence of worms was in fact the beans from a Beanie Baby.  I didn't learn this until after I made a trip to the vet for a deworming medication.

6.  Are you noticing a pattern here? 

Last weekend Hubs scattered some coffee grounds in his garden. He is getting his garden ready to plant in the Spring.  The next morning I let Jessie out to do her business. When I opened the door, she didn't immediately come running back. She usually does.

I called and called. Then called some more.  That's when I saw her small head and disproportionate body sniffing around the garden.

"Jessie, COME HERE!" I called again.

She ran to the door with a big terrier grin on her face and I sniffed her breath.

Coffee breath.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the coffee was a huge, used bag of grounds from Starbucks. 

Sigh.

Jessie was happy as a dog in a garden bed of coffee grounds and didn't appear ill. But I remembered the time our old dog drank an entire cup of coffee and how much time I spent cleaning the carpet.  So I asked our vet about Jessie's morning coffee. 

The vet said she would "have to eat a whole gob of dirt" to get sick.

Lucky for me, Jessie doesn't love dirt nearly as much as the sofa.