First Published in the Tri Town Transcript Nov 24, 2017
By Esther C. Baird
Regular Readers, it’s been awhile, but today let’s return to that always popular topic: Moose, our Bernese mountain dog puppy. He looks all grown up now at around 100 pounds, but I assure you he is not.
Take for example his view on eating things. If you start with the assumption, and who wouldn’t, that all things physical are also edible, than the subset of things that Moose feels free to eat is practically infinite.
Especially dead animals. The dead baby bunny, that he ate in three impressive gulps, set the tenor for what was to follow. Which, specifically, was an dead baby bird, part of a mole, (I’ll let you decide exactly what part), and finally, a snake.
The snake was not just dead, but desiccated. More like a snake-chip.
I’m not squeamish, but my job as Chief Retriever of Dead Things Moose Eats doesn’t totally play to my strengths. That is to say, it doesn’t bring out my most dog-whispery side.
By the time I intercepted Moose, he’d swallowed a good 5 inches of the snake and I was in full freakout. Most trainers don’t advise a freakout. But unless someone is handing out mini martinis on the dog trail, they can just keep that bit of advice to themselves.
Moose thought it was brilliant that he’d found such a tasty morsel, and his eyes looked a little hurt as he watched me jumping and screaming, “DROP IT!!! DROP THE SNAKE!!!!”
Obviously, I was wrong. Why would he drop such a fabulous find? A snake was really just a snack with one letter swapped out.
I grabbed his top jaw and started shaking his mouth so that he couldn’t gulp, and after a few tense moments (well, I was tense, he was cool) the snake dropped out. Moose looked at me like maybe that game had been less fun than he’d hoped, but could he get a treat anyway?
No.
After the snake, he moved on to inanimate objects.
I’ll skip the story where he ate a blister pack of medication — except to say he was able to nibble open the blisters and eat the individual enclosed pills. My vet, who should be on private retainer until Moose grows up, determined that he hadn’t poisoned himself and we all prayed for a side effect of lethargy… to no avail.
The point is, Moose is no mere chewer of shoes, that’s for dogs with no creative vision. This was never more true than last week.
My older daughter yelled, “Moose is eating something! It sounds like a rock.”
I sighed, rocks can chip teeth, so I went over and issued the standard “drop it” command, which, see above, and please just spare me. Obviously we haven’t mastered “drop it.” I know some of you have dogs that actually have. So fabulous for you. But if Moose was a dog who dropped things, I wouldn’t be writing this column would I? So let’s move on.
“Ok, I’m going to open his mouth so you can see the rock,” I said to my daughter.
I grabbed his jaws, and opened.
“It’s Baby Jesus!!!” my daughter cried out.
Uh..? I mean, we are a Christian family, I work at our church, but we are not people who see Jesus in a piece of toast or in latte foam. So I wasn’t sure how to take her declaration.
I called upon my childhood dreams of being the next James Herriot and reached deep into Moose’s throat and pulled out a small hard object.
Yep. That was Baby Jesus. One of our nativity pieces clearly left out from the previous Christmas. Little Baby Jesus, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger… deep within Moose’s gullet. It’s not exactly the biblical version of the Christmas story.
Here’s the bottom line: Moose feels no remorse. All those guilty dog photos that flood the internet? Moose will never be in one. If you are mad at him, he knows that really, you are not feeling irritation, but the need for a giant Bernese Mountain Dog puppy hug.
And the remarkable thing about Moose is, even as you hold your chewed up Leonardo DaVinci notebook, or drink coaster with the cork backing chewed off, or a $10 million remote control that now has a giant divot… one climb on your lap (he’s a lap dog, problem?) and you realize he’s almost always right.