Keeping Mr. Goodbar at our home presented challenges we thought we were up to. First, we bought him his own set of food and water bowls, his own bed, and a full box of treats to use as rewards for learning the ways of our home. We borrowed a crate from my sister so Mr. Goodbar could be kept in the second bathroom; safe space for him and a safe distance from Denali our Lab, since we didn’t know the true nature of this pup well enough to allow him free roam of our home. The crate would help him feel safe and secure in the new environment because we knew his housetraining was sorely lacking as evidenced by several bountiful accidents which usually happened right in front of us.
Following instructions from a training book, the first two days of our routine was to make a non-event of leaving, place Mr. Goodbar in the crate, leave music on, and go on our days. This seemed to go quite well, for two days. When we came home we took both dogs outside and began our evening of getting Mr. Goodbar accustomed to our routines. Naively, we thought we had it figured out already and this wasn’t going to be so hard after all.
It was the third day that I made an error in judgment, Mr. Goodbar decided he had enough of the crate, and the idyllic world of incorporating a new dog into our lifestyles shattered while the reality of what a second dog in a downtown loft really means set in. On the third day I thought Mr. Goodbar was doing so well being crated in the bathroom that I would reward him by placing him in the crate but in our bedroom so he wouldn’t be lonely while we were away and he and Denali could start to get accustomed to sharing space.
This was a bad idea. Partially it changed a routine on a dog that had just gone through a massive change of routine. Partially it gave Mr. Goodbar motivation to get out of that crate, to sleep in the king size bed with Denali which was now within sniffing distance. On that fateful day I came home to a chorus of barks from the other side of my front door. While there is occasion where Denali may bark when she hears the key turn in the lock, I knew there was trouble when I could hear Mr. Goodbar immediately on the other side. Opening the door I was much relieved both he and Denali seemed to be in good spirits, and for a fleeting second I began to question whether I’d really put him in the crate, or if my husband Mike had already come home. That would have been too good to be true. Rather, Mr. Goodbar had escaped the crate by breaking the locking mechanism and then somehow figuring out he needed to lift and pull out the door to the crate. It’s amazing to me he figured this out as putting the crate together in the first place took us over 30 minutes to discover this engineered design.
Checking Mr. Goodbar up and down I looked for any injury he may have caused himself and was much relieved not to find any. But from my crouched position I could now see light reflect in the puddle of urine that more than likely was at one point a stream cascading down the sides of Mike’s guitar case and pooling at the base. Mostly wet with dryness on the case I sighed and realized it was perfectly natural he would have needed to relieve himself, and maybe that was his motivation to get out of the crate in the first place. Getting up to retrieve paper towels and clean the mess I then caught the wondrous whiff unmistakable to the nose as dog shit. In the living / dining / kitchen combination which makes up the main living space of our loft there were three piles of Mr. Goodbar, each on a different corner of the carpets. Ok, that made sense too, although I didn’t think we’d fed him enough to have this much by-product.
Taking the paper towels in-hand, realizing I’d need the whole roll, that’s when I saw the Tupperware container on the floor by the couch, and with brow raised, tried to recall what I’d kept in a Tupperware and accessible to Mr. Goodbar. Picking it up, this somewhat expensive and guaranteed to last for life plastic container had petal shaped holes in the lid, separate from each other, almost like an enormous salt shaker. But, the Tupperware was empty. On the floor next to the container were the plastic shards, much to my relief, and one singular almond.
There had been 3 lbs of almonds stored in the container, purchased just that weekend as a healthy snack to keep around. They were all gone now save for this one lone nut. Now is when I decided taking both dogs outside may need to be the priority above all the cleaning if for nothing else, than to confirm if Mr. Goodbar had indeed ingested all 3 lbs.
Leashing both dogs up, Mr. Goodbar was skeptical of the routine still and lowered his head, lifted his eyes, looked at me, and in my mind was asking ‘Am I getting in trouble?’ But when I leashed up Denali too Mr. Goodbar seemed to realize this was ok, I wouldn’t be leashing up both pups if one of them was in for a talking to. Out on the hill in front of our building my suspicions were quickly confirmed as Mr. Goodbar had movement, after movement, after movement of candy-bar-like waste. Dogs shouldn’t eat almonds, too many of them can be poisonous, and the nuts aren’t easy to digest if dogs can digest them at all. But Mr. Goodbar’s system had no interest in the meat of the nuts, only the skins apparently, as all the waste which came from him was just the butter-yellow nut blended into the chocolatey waste which came out in firm stools.
Mike came home about this time and found me bending to pick up the third pile of Mr. Goodbar’s waste, but still in time to see the evidence which would keep both of us away from Baby Ruth’s for a very long time. Not knowing of the mess upstairs Mike just started laughing, somehow always able to take the most stressful moments of our lives and find the comedy in them. His only comment was to question whether we should still call him Mr. Goodbar, Almond Joy, or Mounds because…you know the slogan.
Our Vet said as long as Mr. Goodbar’s behavior didn’t change, he didn’t lose appetite or thirst, and he kept passing the almonds, he’d probably be ok. Upstairs in our loft we spent the next two hours cleaning and reconstructing the crate and watching Mr. Goodbar closely should he need to go out and otherwise we might miss the signs. Lying in bed that night, with Denali curled up at our feet and Mr. Goodbar shyly crawling up the middle of the bed until his head lay on my hand, and I enjoyed finally being able to laugh myself at how much I was falling in love with this little chocolate colored American Pit Bull Terrier Mix Mutt, and why he was named after a candy bar in the first place, somehow someone must have known. It would be four days before we no longer saw almonds in his waste, and I have to admit, I’ve never laughed so much at dog shit.
