Two Most Remarkable Stories

Most of the Maddie Dog repertoire involves heroic feats of stealing and/or consuming food or food-like substances. Here are two favorites in this vein.

The Story of the Winter Binge; or, Fool Them Once, Shame on You, Fool Them Twice, Shame on Everyone

So it was a very cold January when my college friend's daughter was born. How cold? Cold enough that if you blew a soap bubble outside, it would freeze and crash to the ground, shattering.

I left Maddie in Decatur with my parents to spend the week with the new mother and baby in Minnesota. My dad's mom was in a nursing home in the Quad Cities, and as he was planning a visit, my mother baked several kinds of treats for him to take along: lemon bars, cookies, and fudge. An assortment of these were packed into tins and foolishly left on the kitchen table.

Of course, Maddie ate it all. And she got very sick. But it was too cold to leave her outside, so my dad spent the day cleaning up after her while my mom was at work.

That in itself isn't much of a story. But the very next day, when my dad was about to leave for Moline, the remainder of the treats, which had been safely left on the kitchen counter, was packed into plastic tubs and put into dad's duffel bag... and left on the kitchen table!

Despite vomiting most of the previous day, Maddie proceeded to eat her way through the plastic tubs and devour this second batch of treats. She spent the rest of that day vomiting, while my mom looked after her, since dad had finally left, treatless, for his visit.


The Amazing Dexterous Dog and the Jar of Cookie Mix

This happened just 2 years ago, when she was 14 ½.

For holiday gifts for my daughter's teachers, I had purchased 6 or 7 jars of cookie-mix-in-a-jar, sold as a fund-raiser by a vet student club. These were the kind assembled in mason jars, just add an egg or oil or whatever. Never dreaming this would be attractive to my senior dog, I left these--yes--on my kitchen table. In a plastic grocery bag. And then we went out for dinner. Without feeding the dog first.

Maddie surely thought she was at death's door and needed to take desperate measures to avoid starvation. When we got home, the bag of jars was on a chair. None of the jars was broken. But one was under the table, and SHE HAD UNSCREWED IT. I kid you not. And she had eaten the top couple of layers of ingredients and made a huge mess. But she managed to get the lid off without the benefit of an opposable thumb.

I defy you to top that.