We were the lucky recipients of my dad's dog's only surviving pup. Roux was a gorgeous Boxer . . . stout too . . . a birthday gift from me and your grandfather back in 1991. He loved her, and she worshipped him . . . Roux followed Dad everywhere too. She loved my mom too, but occasionally would get between her and my dad . . . taking Dad's side for everything!
Roux had one litter of puppies, but circumstances during the birth were less than ideal. All, save one, died . . . either during the process or shortly thereafter . . . and she rejected the lone survivor. Maybe she just didn't have the instincts to be a mom. It was up to my parents and sister to bottle feed this pup until she was ready to come live with us . . . they reluctantly let her go in the summer of 1992 . . . about 6 months before your mom was born.
We named her Gretchen . . . her AKC name was Frau Gretchen Von Chidester! Who knows why we chose that name . . . but Boxers are German, so it seemed appropriate.
She was such a fun puppy!
We'll flash forward a bit . . . toward the end of her life . . . but I'll add some other stories about her later.
We moved to Knoxville in 1999, so Gretchen was approaching her twilight years. Big dogs typically live 9-12 years . . . in reality, dogs should live as long as we do . . . it hurts when they go.
She didn't like to go outside too much; it was just too hot (or cold) for her, so she pretty much became an inside dog. We'd had a couple of cancerous spots cut off her, so we knew that it wouldn't be long . . . but we had 3 good years with her in Knoxville before the end. One cancer that was removed came off her foot. It was difficult to keep her from chewing on the bandages, so the vet gave us one of those "cones of shame" to help prevent that. She somehow got around it and kept making the wound worse. I tried several solutions to stop her, but nothing worked. Then one day while I was perusing the aisles at Walmart, I got the bright idea to attach a colander to the front of the cone . . . it would require punching holes around the edge of the cone so I could attach the colander with zip ties . . . and I'd have to put it on every evening since I couldn't keep an eye on her while I slept. She HATED it, and she looked ridiculous in it, but it worked!
In October of 2001 her personality changed, and I noticed that she'd become a little more lethargic . . . going outside only to "do her business" . . . coming back in and sleeping at my feet all day.
The girls carved Jack-o-Lanterns that year . . . small pumpkins that they could handle themselves. We left them on the back deck . . . were waiting until closer to Halloween to put them on the front steps. The girls came home from school one day and wanted to know where their Jack-o-Lanterns were, and I said they should be on the deck as that's where we'd left them. Nope . . . we checked . . . they were gone! At first I suspected neighborhood kids . . . it was weird though since we had a privacy fence out there.
Then I took Gretchen out to potty . . . and as she pooped orange bits, I realized the fate of those pumpkins . . . she'd eaten them . . . both of them . . . stems and all!! My immediate reaction was to call the vet!! I had no idea whether or not ingesting pumpkins could kill a dog!! The vet assured me that pumpkin was actually good for dogs . . . in small doses of course . . . suggested I keep an eye on her just in case.
While the girls were terribly upset, Gretchen suffered no ill effects from the mishap.
But that would be the beginning of Gretchen eating everything she could get her mouth on! Here's a list of everything I can personally verify:
- A dozen oranges
- A dozen apples
- A bag of Atomic Fireballs candy . . . plastic wrapper and all
- At least 10 boxes of Little Debbie snack cakes (she somehow broke into the pantry 3 times)
- Orange/Peanut Butter crackers out of the girls' backpacks (chewing directly through the backpacks . . . and their homework)
- A box of Andes mints
- A metal toothed hairbrush (I do not know how the tines didn't puncture her intestines)
- An aluminum can (again, how this did not puncture her insides is beyond my understanding)
- 2 5lb bags of Tootsie Rolls
- Used and discarded tissues from the bathroom trashcan (along with feminine products - ick)
- Most of the contents from a bag of trash I'd stupidly left in the mud room
Honestly, I don't know how she survived ANY of it . . . that none of it seemed to make her sick . . . chocolate is supposed to kill dogs!
And why? I have no clue. I suspect she was probably in pain, and she simply did it because she didn't know what else to do to stop the pain!
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