Not for dogs!

I like chocolate. In fact everyone likes chocolate in our house. We try not to have it too much, because it’s not the healthiest thing in the world, but sometimes you just need a tasty morsel of gourmet chocolate to melt in your mouth while you moan in pleasure. You know you do it. There’s no need to deny it. We’re all friends here.

Since we all love the stuff, I buy my girls a tower of heart-shaped boxes filled with a variety of tasty gourmet chocolate every Valentine’s Day. Sure I eat half of them, but that’s not important right now. What matters is that I care enough to buy my girls the chocolate they deserve for no other reason than I like it too. Chocolate defies both logic and grammatical protocols you see.

While chocolate is a wonderful treat for humans, it contains a chemical called theobromide that is toxic to dogs. I’m no chemist, but I am a know-it-all nerd with too much time on my hands, so please excuse me while I pontificate. When a dog consumes chocolate, the amount of chocolate consumed is especially important in relation to the size of the dog. If a Chihuahua were to eat an entire Hershey’s Special Dark bar, he might be in mortal danger. If Guinness, my 140 pound Newfoundland, ate a bar, he would likely just develop a bit of gas. Experience has shown this to be a threat only to those of us who share breathable air with him. At any rate, as a concerned dog owner, I must warn you to never leave chocolate where your dogs can get to it. I should add that some dogs can get into places that would surprise you. Some dogs are also just bad dogs.

Last year my girls got their tower of chocolate, and all was well with the world. We went out later that day for my friend John’s wedding rehearsal and had a grand time. Upon our return we were welcomed by Annie and Guinness — two psychotic beasts who seemed to have scored some amphetamines. I figured that Annie had used a pencil in her mouth to dial the phone in order to hook up with her dealer. That seemed reasonable given past experiences.

Annie’s apparent drug connections and new-found ability to dial the phone didn’t explain the carnage of destroyed chocolate boxes and torn wrappers all over the floor. I tried to find a reason for the sudden lack of chocolate, but I couldn’t concentrate because Annie was running in circles in the family room. She wasn’t chasing her tail — she was literally running in circles within the room while Guinness gave pursuit. I let them both out so I could think and so that my home theater speakers might survive the hurricane of drool and hair.

All we know for sure is that the dogs ate the entire contents of five heart-shaped boxes of chocolate. We don’t know which dog ate what chocolate, and we don’t know how much was consumed by which dog. Given the many hours of manic dog behavior we had to endure, we assume that Annie ate most of it, then probably got shoved aside by Guinness, the Alpha dog. They might have shared the rest, but we’ll never know for sure. Guinness was probably only a third as nuts as Annie that day, but at the time he was probably a third heavier as well. After many hours, both dogs calmed down and slept off their chocolate bender with no obvious side-effects. Well, none except for the gas. I still have nightmares about the gas.

For what it’s worth, these boxes were closed, some still sealed, and they were in the center of the dining room table. For those in doubt, that’s not good enough with a dog like Annie in the house. In order for her to have taken these boxes down, she would have had to climb up onto the table. While not a stretch given the fact that we’ve caught her sitting on our patio table, I am somehow unsettled by the idea that Annie has stood on the table where I eat my dinner.

This year I forced Annie into rehab by not providing any chocolate towers. Instead my kids got Celtic necklaces so that they might celebrate their heritage. Annie fought back by eating my special Valentine’s Day bagel from the kitchen counter when I wasn’t looking. Maybe we should install higher counters in the kitchen.

Please note that while this is a funny story, chocolate, especially baker’s chocolate, can be fatal to dogs. We were lucky because most of what Annie ate was milk chocolate, and she was a very big girl. That much chocolate might well have killed a smaller dog, so please keep your chocolate away from your dogs. Thanks, GAD

Opposable Thumbs Required

I like my butter soft. I don’t think that’s so strange, but it has been a source of lighthearted contention in our house since we’ve had a house to share.

You see Lauren is firmly entrenched in the camp that believes butter should be refrigerated lest it go rancid over time. Being someone who won’t drink milk that’s even close to the expiration date, I can see her point of view. While I have experienced the joy of lumpy milk first-hand, I have never sampled the taste of rancid butter. Perhaps that is why my point of view differs from Lauren’s.

Aged milk aside, I like my butter to be soft, which means that it needs to be warm, which, in turn, means it shouldn’t be stored in the refrigerator. Cold butter means firm butter, and firm butter just doesn’t spread nicely. The risk of torn toast is simply too great for me to risk firm butter, let alone hard butter. I spend a great deal of time and energy toasting my bread to a perfect texture and golden-brown color. I am certainly not going to risk my handiwork with something so vulgar as firm butter.

As an aside, I would like to point out that no one uses the term “buttery” to describe something hard and cold. If my butter isn’t buttery, than what is? How can the thing I’m using to describe a texture and consistency not exhibit the fundamental principles used as the basis for identifying said principles?  Call me pedantic, but if my butter isn’t buttery, I’m not eating it. I have my standards after all.

While I like my butter to be soft, Annie has no such preference. She likes her butter in any form, so long as it’s available, though to be painfully accurate, availability is rarely a concern of hers. Annie doesn’t just like butter, it is by far, her favorite food, and she will do whatever it takes to sneak a lick or even steal an entire bar of the stuff. Annie it would seem, can not be bothered with the rantings of a butter connoisseur.

Since Lauren wanted to keep the peace, she took to storing the butter in the microwave when we were not at home. The butter stayed soft, and Annie couldn’t figure out how to open the microwave door, though I did catch her staring at it in contemplation more than once. Lauren then took to storing everything even remotely edible in the microwave. At first we used the oven, but quickly learned that we often forgot when the oven was full. Apparently bananas, butter, grapes and clementines don’t do well in an oven when it’s preheated to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Who knew?

Annie altered the battlefield in the butter wars, as the ever escalating games of “hide the butter” have come to be known. You see if we left the butter out — so that it might attain the perfect consistency needed for easy spreading — it would disappear. We thought for a time that we had been visited repeatedly by the butter fairy, but we grew suspicious at the callous lack of dollars where the butter had once been. We were also concerned about the teeth marks on the butter dish. According to my measurements of the bite radius, the butter fairy would have been about 120 pounds, sporting large fangs and powerful jaws. Somehow this didn’t line up with the mental image I’d always had of fairies. To be fair though, I’m far from an expert on the subject, regardless of what my middle school gym teacher might have said to the contrary.

Early in the butter wars, Annie took an entire stick off of the counter, and when Lauren caught her in the act, Annie chewed furiously in an attempt to swallow the stick before Lauren could take it from her. Convinced that we needed better armor, Lauren bought a closing butter dish. Once we contained the butter, Annie stole not only the butter, but the butter dish as well. She then proceeded to lick and chew the butter dish in an attempt to extract the last molecules of butter essence from the plastic tray. We threw that butter dish out.

Lauren then bought a Rubbermaid butter dish with a “locking” lid. I use the term locking loosely, since the magic ferret-dog managed to take the dish, dismantle it, enjoy the contents, then summarily destroy it. Annie’s lust for butter, it would seem, knew no bounds.

She had eaten through one butter dish, and tried desperately to destroy the next. Lauren then went all out and bought a heavy-duty industrial grade mil-spec space-age locking Tupperware butter dish. This dish was a piece of engineering magnificence, guaranteed to keep the butter safe from shark attacks and two-year-olds. Surely it would keep a puppy at bay, even if she was a 120 pound ferret-puppy from the magical land of Newfoundland where butter fairies roam.

I am happy to report that thus far the beast has been unable to gain entry to the butter. The super-dish does sport marks from one night’s attack, but her efforts were for naught, and for now, our butter remains safe. Sure we eat dinner every night with a butter dish marred by bite marks. Sure we sometimes have to scoop the butter from the lid instead of the tray. Apparently she rolls the super-dish around at night in an attempt to get at the tasty butter inside. None of that matters. What matters is that, for now at least, we have outsmarted the ferret-dog.

Our butter remains soft and the integrity of my victory toast is assured. Life is good… for now.