The Austin Chronicles - Part 1

This is the first installment in a 10 (million) part series I like to call "The Austin Chronicles." If you're scratching your head wondering who Austin is, well then you haven't seen this or this. In a nutshell, Austin is our 8-year-old Chocolate Lab, who eats Irish Spring soap, thinks my 5'x7' zebra rug is his personal blankie, and is just an all-around hoot. Especially if hoots weigh more than the average teenager and cost you more in medical bills than the average budget of a major metropolitan city.

The Austin Chronicles, though numbered for easy reference (who ever said Stewzie doesn't care about the blog-readers?), will not necessarily be in any chronological order. I figure, if Austin is unpredictable, so too should be his chronicles. This series will likely include:

1.) That time he broke his leg and it cost us our life savings BEFORE we had pet insurance.
2.) That time he cut the tip of his tail and left a trail of high velocity blood spatter across the entire U.S. of A. and didn't stop bleeding for SIX months.
3.) That time he got a chunk of wood lodged in his soft palate.
4.) That time he ate the baseboards off our walls, the hair dye in my purse, the only roll of film from Stewzie's first Thanksgiving and Christmas, bubble gum lips, and a wallet IN ONE DAY.
5.) The time he kinda-sorta broke-dislocated his tail.
6.) The time he ate a whole platter of blackened redfish in 10 seconds.
7.) The time he escaped from the backyard and caused his normally fully-clothed mama to run up and down our old neighborhood in her PANTIES searching for him. Oh, and our old neighborhood was located 10 feet from a major highway and directly across the street from the largest Baptist church in the city and it just happened to be Sunday at noon.
8.) The time he committed grand larceny of the neighbor dog's frisbee.
9.) The time he found a sea turtle in our suburban back yard.
10.)The time he fell in a pool 3 times in a row, not realizing it was there. Oh, and he is TERRIFIED of water. You read that correctly. A LABRADOR RETRIEVER. TERRIFIED OF WATER.

So, here goes Part 1...

The Brillo Pad

A few years back, I got home from work one day, and like the good wife that I am, I set out to clean the bathroom. Step one was cleaning the bathtub. I got out a fresh, new Brillo Pad, and then the phone rang. I set the Brillo Pad down on the tub and walked into the living room to answer the phone. Wrong number, it turns out. So I go back into the bathroom, and am greeted by my little brown helper, who has blue soap powder all over his little brown snout and lining his little puppy lips. And there is no trace of said Brillo Pad, save for a tiny shard of steel wool lying at his feet. I opened his jaws as wide as a Hungry Hungry Hippo, and see a streak of blue going all the way down his little puppy throat. I then uttered the strangest sentence of my life. "My dog ate the Brillo Pad."

I frantically called our Vet, but remember, I had just gotten home from work. Which means it's about 5:30, and the regular Vet closes at 5:00. So I call the Emergency Vet. They don't open til 6:00. Of course. Whoever left a one hour span of Vetlessness between regular Vet hours and Emergency Vet hours has obviously never owned an Austin. Anyway, after about 72 desperate voicemails left by yours truly, they called me back. I explained the whole thing to the skeptical receptionist, who informed me that I could try to make the dog throw up by feeding him peroxide, but then the B.P. might get lodged in his esophagus and choke him. I vetoed that option. Even though choking him did sound tempting. But we're talking about the same dog that used to lick the hot pepper "don't chew the furniture" spray like it was coffee table seasoning. I doubted peroxide would affect his iron belly negatively. Our other option was to let him try to digest and poop out the B.P., but since it is literally made of tiny strands of sharp metal, I vetoed that option, fearing canine colon surgery might be in our future. And if anyone in our household is going to have colon surgery, it's not going to be an animal. Or me. So Stew and I loaded up Black Betty and drove our little Austin Ambulance down to the Emergency Vet.

They put us in a tiny exam room and lined about 95% of the floor with newspaper, you know, for the REGURGITATION. The doc then explained that the solution to our little "issue" would be to give the dog a couple vials of this powder stuff that gets put in the dog's eyes, which then causes their central nervous system to freak out and make them nauseated, and then puke up the "foreign object." He assured us that 2 of these vials usually do the trick. If not, you wait 10 minutes and then give 'em 2 more vials. Never has it taken more than 6 vials. TEN vials later, my pup starts drooling and stumbling and we're all "Oooh, he's about to vomit," and he makes his way over to the only corner of the room that's not lined with newspaper (of course) and with a giant heave-ho, ralphs up.....a MUSHROOM SLICE. Not a Brillo Pad. But a slice of friggin' fungi. The Vet shoots me a cynical glance and I'm all "I swear to you, He really did swallow a Brillo Pad. And no, I don't have a clue where he found a slice of mushroom to consume." So 2 more vials (for a total of TWELVE) and the dog finally yaks up the piece de' resistance - a whole, intact Brillo Pad. I'm assuming that B.P. soap is not toxic, because in no way were his stomach acids tinted blue, so he must have digested that part without a hitch.

Just shy of $300 later, we were on our way home with a furry brown stomach that was as empty as our wallet. Luckily, we were wise enough to enroll our little health hazard in a pet insurance plan a couple years earlier, and they reimbursed us almost 2/3 of the bill. Much easier to swallow, pun intended.

Moral of the story is to never clean your bathroom. Or just have your dog's jaw wired shut. Either or.