UNITED STATES—I have been unbound from tawdry routine and the daily grind. It turns out good ol’ Luna loves travel as much as that tabby cat that got plastered all over the neighborhood. Poor thing hasn’t been seen, or else the owners forgot to take down the poster. The “master” holds out hope that he can be a feline rescuer still.
I solemnly promise and cross my paws. I did not eat the tiger striped tabby cat. Meanwhile, I got to trip this week.
Mortals with lesser knowledge of a dog’s life presume that the bright colors on Trident sugar-free chewing gum are what entice me to chomp on it and chew it to shreds, those flamingo pink, lime-green, arctic-blue packages that scream off the impulse shelves at the grocery check-out line. As a matter of fact, we canines have a Technicolor nose and monochromatic vision.
The secret-sauce of sugar-free gum is Xylitol, an artificial sweetener good for human teeth, and potentially deadly to canines. Look, I did it once and lived to yet wag my tail. The Master had cow when he read that even a small amount of the stuff could be curtains for Luna.
This time, the confetti blizzard of a shredded package carpeted the bed where my forty pounds of pit-bill lab lounged. I had really got my paw stuck in the cookie jar. Soon enough the master had pieced together the shreds to discover the substance held in the colorful container I had devoured.
I was limp, I was groggy. The master felt it was his duty to lift this bedraggled link of muscle and bone. He carried her into the sala and kneaded her inert limbs to bring her back from Catatonia. He rubbed my neck and beheld the extreme rings of Saturn in the dilation of her eyes. His heart sank and he feared for Leapin’ Loca Luna. To his credit he knew better to suppress an urge to web search “the effect of shrooms on dogs.” There was no tine for that. Not now.
Here I was in a stupor. The master could get sidetracked, when my life was at stake. And what if he was looking up what would surely be a grim outlook, given the poor and often harmful outcomes foretold for dogs who chomp on onions, bacon, bread and milk, much less shrooms.
To be continued…
