NOT for the faint of heart... or stomach.

I'm warning you up front... no reading this post and then blaming me for making you feel queasy. or inclined to call PETA. it's your last chance to stop reading and go do something lovely, like eat cake or organize your sock drawer...


My dog has always been sort of a picky eater. Thankfully, for most of his life he was content with good old fashioned Dog Chow, regular, plain. No Kibbles and Bits, nothing fancy. And he didn't really like dog treats. Why would he like bacon-flavored dog treats when he knows real bacon exists in the world? The occasional pig-ear would be chewed on, or bones, but that's about it. Now that he's a bit older, he's apparently developed a taste for the more expensive dry food (this was discovered at G'ma Linda's, as he tried to gobble all of Bullet's food) so now we buy the good stuff for him, sometimes mixing it with all sort of things we know he likes... bacon, shredded cheese, leftovers, the fat off of my steak, a drizzle of bacon grease, etc. I know. There is a school of thought that it is very bad for the dog to eat such things. I respect that view. However, I've secretly given him bits of real people food all his 13 years, and now that we know he has cancer I don't think this is the time to lay down the law. Plus, we just want him to keep eating. So far so good... even though he ignores his food sometimes, he's still doing pretty well and, as I blogged before, he's growing rather, um, SOLID.

In the last couple of years, we've discovered that Chino does have a sweet tooth of sorts. Yes, I think he does. As I am partial to the dark chocolate s'more husband brought me from The Chocolate Bar yesterday, my dog really diggs opossum. As he reminded us last night... when we opened the door to let him in and there, in a patch of light, was the latest victim, brought up to the back door, no doubt, to show us what a fierce hunter and generous giver he is. We collectively groaned and I tried not to barf as we called to Chi and checked him out, to see if he'd sustained any injury. One leg appeared to have a little scratch. His breath was the grossest thing ever and I tried to think of something else. We immediately put him in the shower and I scrubbed him all over. To assuage your fears, he's fine and he's had all his shots. This morning he's fine and showing no signs of craziness or rabid-dog symptoms. He's already been out and forlornly sniffed the place he left his, ah, friend last night. barf.

The opossum chronicles began a couple of years ago in Hico, Texas. I'd taken Chino home with me, and left him to hang out in my YaYa's gigantic backyard overnight. It really is huge, with tons of trees and a fish pond to tantalize him. While drinking coffee the next morning at my folks' house, the phone rang. "Chino is a warrior!" my YaYa crowed. "He got a 'possum last night!" "Wha?!" was my response, I think. He'd brought the dead animal up to the back door, to ensure it was YaYa's morning surprise when she ventured out. She was pretty non-plussed... people who live in the country are so much less squeamish about death. She was actually thankful, I think, that he rid her of a pest in her yard. When we got to town, they'd disposed of the grody evidence but Chi had these marks on his face, smelled horrible, and grinned and pranced around like a proud... well, warrior.




We all laughed, and I took the above picture. Because, as a disgusted-yet-proud mom, I know it's all about chronicling the journey. We came home, and hubby-then-boyfriend and I found a stuffed opossum for him to play with. He loved it.






What happened next was just... epic. EPIC.

It was a dark and stormy night. Okay, not stormy. But dark. I was home alone. I was living with my aunt at the time, and she was out of town. The dog was out back, and I was about to take a shower. Deciding to let the dog in, I walked to the back door and saw him there through the glass, outside. "Hm", thought I. "I didn't know he took his stuffed animal outside." So I opened the door. And in ran a gleeful, energetic Chino, with a freshly expired opossum hanging from his mouth. HE RAN INTO THE HOUSE. TRAILING DROPLETS OF RED SUBSTANCE. Like any self-respecting woman, I screamed and jumped up on the kitchen counter, curling my legs up as far as possible to get my feet away from the beasts and the droplets and the situation at large. Chino looked at me, clearly expecting a high-five. Oh, and I was buck naked. Because I was GOING to take a shower.

I somehow shooed him out the door again. And flipped out. And obsessively, squeamishly cleaned the floor, in my birthday suit, all the while listening to my dog happily crunching down on his victim directly outside the door. Yes, I heard crunching. That was the first time I thought I would vomit. Then, I had to sit there and consider what to do next. I managed to open the door and cajole the dog away from his new BFF. I grabbed him by the collar, propelled him to the bathroom, and bathed him. and bathed him again. I thought I would upchuck in the shower. With him smelling like he just left a salon, I went over the floors again, desiring nothing more than to sanitize the world around me. I threw away his collar. Chi whined a little to be let back out, missing the thing on the back porch. And there it was, the final task. What was I supposed to do with it?! I poked my head out and surveyed the situation. Gross. Barf. Was it all the way dead? It was crunched on, so surely so, right? I rooted around in the laundry room for tools to deal with disposing of the thing, and only found a dustpan and some tool for poking the thing. I honestly don't remember what the tool was... must've blocked it out. Oh, I was dressed by this point as well. "Finally!" you all think in relief.

I went out armed with these paltry tools and poked the thing to, you know, make sure it was dead. It's teeth were barred, so scarily that I started talking to myself and wigging out. I knew there were better, superior tools out under the carport, but it was dark and there were apparently opossums running rampant. I tried to wedge the dustpan under the animal, which had that eerie weight of death, which freaked me out all over again. That's when I started crying, and seriously considered calling 'a man' to do it, any man. The shame of it all kept me from doing that, so I sucked it up and managed to somehow finagle the poor carcass into a trash bag, and drag the bad to the dumpster, and roll the dumpster to the curb. And bang down on the lid to make sure it was really closed. Then I went inside and texted my aunt, who howled at the story.

So, my dog has a taste for opossum. Everyone has a weakness, I guess, especially instinctive beasts. I confess, as totally stomach-turning as I find it, there's a tiny part of me that is thankful he's feeling good enough to get himself a 'possum. However, because I don't want you to go away with gory images in your head, here's my good boy:









And for the record, I never actually tossed my cookies. I'm obviously the toughest woman you know, duh.

-m.y.