Of mice and men...

A few weeks ago, I went home for lunch to release the puppy into the backyard. I heated up some leftovers and sat in the backyard to eat while Max frolics about! As I was eating, I noticed Max was chewing on something. It sort of looked like a big mushroom or something from a distance. I stopped eating and walked over to have a closer look... it was a mushroom with a tail! Wait! The mushroom had ears too! Crap! It's a mouse! Max was chomping on a field mouse! I quickly told Max to "drop it!" as we were taught in Puppy Obedience class. Usually, this works for almost everything. Max just looked at me and continued munching! This will not do. I went and grabbed his favorite treats and came back and said "drop it!" repeatedly with the treats in my hand. This is usually quite effective, but not this time. He seems to have a treat far superior than anything I could offer him. Ok, so he won't drop it... let's try "Come here boy! Come here Max! Touch!" ("touch" is the command for the puppy to come running and touch your hand with his nose). He just looked at me again and continued munching. Ok, can't let him eat this mouse. Don't know where it has been. The mouse could've died from the plague for all I know. Could've been dead for days. No idea. Have to take the mouse! Time to rush for the mouse! So I made a move to grab a hold of the puppy! Max is pretty fast and he quickly dodges my grasp! He is continues to munch on the mouse as I am chasing him about the yard! I finally corner him and I am able to grab him! He still won't respond to verbal commands! I am hesitant to touch the mouse! It could be infectious! So I turn the puppy upside down holding him near his hind legs and I am trying to shake the mouse out of him! He continues munching! Arrggghhh!!! I try to choke the mouse out of him as I am shaking him upside down! He still won't let it go!!! Ok, time is running out! Have resorted to just prying his jaws open and grabbing the mouse with my bare hands! I turn the puppy right side up and pry his jaws open.... the mouse is gone!!! Noooooooooooo!!!! Arrrggghhhhh!!!!

That's ok. Don't panic. May need to get Max to vomit up the mouse. I remember reading that there is something to can feed a dog to get him to vomit. Need to get the laptop quickly. I look it up... can use hydrogen peroxide! Can't find it! Have to call fiance at her work to ask her where it is! She says call the vet to see what to do! Vet says just to watch him or bring him in so they can watch him. He said to make sure that Max doesn't vomit, diarrhea, convulses, or is lethargic. Will cost a lot of money to have the vet watch him or I can take him with me back to work. But I work at a networking company so it would be very bad for him to chew on network cables and he would be a major distraction. He has already chewed the cable of the AC adapter for the laptop and that was $50 to replace! Or, we can gamble and assume he'll be ok... fiance will come home from work in a couple of hours anyways. Ok, gambing with puppy's life that his mouse was not seriously toxic in some way and the mouse did not die from rat poison. He looks perfectly fine right now. Put Max in his crate and went back to work.

When fiance came home, Max seemed perfectly fine. For the rest of the night, he seemed perfectly normal. However, when I returned at lunch time the next day, Max had diarrhea and it was everywhere in his crate. I'll spare the details on how the cleaning turned out, but it is safe to say, it was not pretty and it was definitely not fun!

It has been over 3 weeks since that horrible day and Max has seen the vet twice and is doing fine and is at about 14 lbs in weight now. I guess having our first puppy eat his first prized mouse was not that bad. I guess we can be very overprotective parents as well.

At my signal, unleash hell...

Max is getting to be pretty big puppy! Max is now probably around 12 lbs and although he's not getting much taller, he is getting to be very long and stout! Unfortunately, we haven't taken any recent pictures of Max to show off but I do have an older picture of Max when he was about 8 and half weeks old. This picture was posted on the daily puppy and someone commented on how much he liked this picture and said, "Ha! Look at him hiding behind the buckets in that 4th pic down! Waiting to attack with cuteness! 'At my signal, unleash hell.' "