A list of unapproved dog food

If you, like me, have reached a point in life that the articles you read are helping you accrue hours toward your PhD in such topics as foreign relations, the oil and gas industry, constitutional law and epidemiology; you might be ready to hear what somebody’s dog ate this week.

If you are that person, you’re in luck because my dog ate a plethora of things that would harm the average dog. But Erma is no average dog.

*Do not try this at home

**Seriously

Erma, our wonder (how she’s still alive) dog, successfully ingested numerous new and improved items over the past week, including an entire baking potato, a bowl of chopped onions, a slice of toast and in an ironic twist, a stress ball. Welcome to my glamorous life.

Let’s unpack some of this, shall we?

I got kind of a frantic call at work last week that Erma was caught under her invisibility cloak (the coffee table) snacking on a huge raw baking potato. With only about an inch of the end left, my husband said she had eaten a meal fit for an Irish king. A quick call to the vet told us it could kill her or not, but give her Pepto Bismol anyway.

She was fine.

So, for a bit she continued doing what was working for her which was stealing bizarre food. The slice of toast she snagged off the counter didn’t surprise us because she is obviously partial to carbs, but the bowl of onions really put some questions marks above our heads.

The stress ball, though, ended up being the real mystery card this week, as we naturally thought it was a green microfiber towel. We thought it was a green microfiber towel because her poop had green in it, and history would indicate that she was feeding her towel and textile addiction.

It went like this: My husband Bobby told me he thought Erma had eaten an astrobright green towel, followed with a “go look and let me know.”

This is code for “you must go in the back yard and play like that lady scientist on Jurassic Park by closely examining poop to determine recent diet.”

So, of course I did.

I wasn’t convinced because while it was green, it wasn’t quite the right shades as there were several greens. We had a mystery on our hands and in our dog’s digestive tract.

On day three of the great green purge, I had an epiphany. Robin Morris gave me a camoflauge stress ball a few days before, which I tucked into my purse. A quick check of my purse confirmed that my stress ball was gone and Erma had added that to the repertoire of things she shouldn’t eat, but did anyway.

To be fair, Erma did look more relaxed.

Erma lived to see another week of wrong things beckoning that dog to put them into her stomach and her enthusiastically agreeing, Somehow she always survives.

And so will we.