Well, we didn’t pay $1,500 for the chew toy right away. We paid that after the dog surgeon dislodged it from our dog’s lower intestine. Maybe I should start at the beginning.

**

Don’t ask me why, but Beau decided his chew toy was a chew-and-swallow toy. He’s a fidgety guy who constantly needs to be doing something and since he doesn’t have opposable thumbs he can’t text or play video games so he uses what he has which is his chewing mechanism. Otherwise known as his mouth.

Beau is a German Shorthaired Pointer. Otherwise known as a GSP. He should be called a CSP, a Chewing Shorthaired Pointer.

He chews shoes. He chews pillows. Plastic bags. Grass. Newspaper. Cards. Envelopes. Mail. The corner of the rug. Tennis balls. My sandal with my foot still in it. He’s a crazy boy.

Most of the time he spits everything out. Or poops it out.

I’ve talked to him about this and told him he’s playing with fire and that this is a health hazard. He understands but he still takes the risk because, as he points out (he’s a pointer, after all), hoomans also do a lot of things they know are bad for them but they do them just the same because it’s fun.

Good point. Point-er made.

Thus, when I pick up processed dog food from the backyard, I expect Boomer’s to be all one color while Beau’s will be rainbow-colored. Red for something red he ate. Blue for something blue he ate. And so forth.

Evenings at Camp Orgeron are a delightful way to end the day, relaxing over an adult beverage (Glenn, Captain Morgan) or hot chocolate (yours truly) and engaging in scintillating conversation. Here’s a sample:

Glenn: “What’s Beau got in his mouth?”
Me: “It looks like a hunk of his Jolly Ball.”
Glenn: “Can you get that away from him?”
Me: “Beau! Beau! Come over here right now!”

We take turns jumping up and chasing him around (which we count as exercise even if our exertions don’t show up on our fitness app) and sticking our fingers in his mouth and fishing out something soggy, like the cotton ball that he surfed off the bathroom vanity.

It goes on like that until bedtime. I have no idea what Boomer thinks about this. He’ll watch for a while and then close his eyes and pretend he’s sleeping.

Anyway, we were lulled into complacency about the chewing thing because it always ended well. Until the day it didn’t. And that’s when we cashed our Reality Check.

It seems that Beau finally chewed and swallowed something that wouldn’t slide harmlessly through his intestines and on out into the backyard. In fact, he swallowed something that for all intents and purposes was an intestinal plug.

It was cylindrical, smooth, firm rubber and apparently the exact diameter of his lower intestine. Which is where it got stuck.

Nothing happened for a while. Then:

2 a.m., Wednesday: Beau upchucks all over the bedroom. In some cases, missing the acres of tile and hitting the one spot where there’s a rug.

6 a.m., Wednesday: Beau barfs copious amounts of … never mind. You get the idea.

Suffice it to say that what doesn’t go through gets returned to sender and I was doing cleanup on Aisle 4.

Even more to the point, and an even bigger clue that something was drastically wrong, was that Beau did not eat his breakfast. Sure, he was throwing up but that’s never interfered with him continuing to eat. This dog has never missed a meal and if he happens to get fed twice, because Glenn and I got our wires crossed and each of us served Doggie Breakfast, Beau will never tell us. To be fair, neither will Boomer. They both are as wildly enthusiastic for Second Breakfast as they were for Earlier Breakfast.

But here is Beau sniffing at his food and saying “no thanks.”

I called Beau’s PCV (Primary Care Vet) and got the earliest appointment which was the next morning. Then I wrung my hands for a while before loading Beau into the car and hustling over to the local emergency clinic. And yes, I brought my own clean-up bags and paper towels because messes be happenin’.

Mind you an emergency clinic is the court of last resort where the really serious stuff happens, usually at the last minute when things have taken a turn for the worse. We weren’t at that stage yet. Beau was still mobile and pulling on his leash.

But it would be hours before he could be seen, so I asked the vet tech to take Beau’s vitals: Heart rate, blood pressure, temperature.

Everything checked out “normal.”

So, I took Barf Boy home to observe him and wait for tomorrow’s appointment with the PCV (by the way, there is no such thing as a Primary Care Vet. I made that up).

Meanwhile, for the first time in weeks Glenn is taking a few days off from his Home Reno Project to enjoy a much-deserved outing with his poker buddies at a casino resort halfway across town. I usually don’t text or call him when he’s off duty like this. But this is need-to-know stuff so he’s on Team Bozey-Bear, getting updates and staying tuned.

Day Two. By now Beau is not doing much except standing around looking off into space. It hurts him to sit or lie down so he’s falling asleep on his feet. At one point he walked over and rested his head on the arm of the sofa and tried sleeping that way.

Our appointment rolls around and the first thing I find out is that Beau has lost six pounds! That’s a lot for someone who tops out at 56 pounds. Beau gets a thorough exam and we get X-rays that show, to no one’s surprise, that he has a blockage. And he has to have surgery.

Sometimes I wish my dog could understand hooman language but not today. I am glad he doesn’t hear what I hear; he’s miserable but not scared.

My text that day to Glenn advises him to play some winning hands because fixing Beau’s problem is going to be cha-ching cha-ching.

Do you remember how you answered the question on your dog adoption papers when it asked what your price limit was for pet medical care?

And do you remember what you said about investing in pet health insurance?

Both of these questions were running through my mind as I looked at the bill estimate for Bozey. If the surgery ran into complications (like the Golden retriever who ate three selections from his owner’s lingerie collection that had to be cut out of three different places in his gut) we could be paying the biggest vet bill we’ve ever paid. That was the worst-case scenario. And the casino payout wasn’t going to come into play because Glenn had left any potential winnings on the table so he could hurry over to meet me at the dog hospital.

In all my years of having dogs and dealing with dog problems, I’ve never encountered a situation that required dog surgery.

Dog surgery isn’t like people surgery where you sit with your loved one while they are in pre-op getting hooked up to an IV, checking their phone, meeting their anesthesiologist and answering a litany of questions (Have you eaten anything today? What is your name? What are you here for today? Questions that I’m sure are required in the wake of some malpractice lawsuit where they got the wrong guy or operated on the wrong body part).

Thus, I said goodbye to Beau in the examination room as I slipped off his collar and he was led away. Seeing his sad little self leave made me feel as bad mentally as he did physically.

And what thoughts were running through Bozey-Bear’s mind? His gut hurts. He feels sick at his stomach. He has no idea why he’s taking all these rides in the car. He’s showing up at places that smell like dogs because there are dogs at these places and they don’t seem to be having any fun either. Everywhere he goes he’s being surrounded by new people who are kind and concerned. They keep taking his temperature which for some reason has something to do with his butt. And he keeps hearing his name repeated over and over by the hoomans. “Blah-blah-blah, Beau, blah blah. Blah blah blah blah BLAH Beau. Blah blah.” And then something else will happen and he will go somewhere else.

Anyway, surgery. Just like two-legged surgery, it was hours before we heard that Beau was done and recovering in post-op. His surgeon had good news, too. She only had to make one incision to get to his lower intestine. She was able to manually manipulate his uncut lower intestine to move the “plug” further along to a place (*cough* and you know probably know what “place” I mean) where Beau could finish the job himself. Poop it out, in other words.

So, hallelujah, less surgery was involved which was good for Beau and good for our bottom line. We also were told Beau was awake and ready to go home.

We bundled Beau into the car and went home rejoicing. And then for the next couple of days, for the first time since he came to live with us, Beau was a Quiet Boy. Subdued. He didn’t bounce around, he didn’t grab things, he didn’t shout in Boomer’s ear. Nope, he just let the anesthesia leave his system and took his calming pain relievers.

He was able to eat and eliminate so, of course, we were in full-on poop patrol mode. This finally paid off when we spotted something brightly colored in the backyard and verified that Beau had gotten rid of his problem.

His veterinarian surgeon wanted us to let her know what it was, so we cleansed it and took a picture.

And in conclusion: Is Beau any wiser for his experience? Has he learned a valuable lesson?

Yes, of course. Just the other day he told me he had mended his ways and realized the extent of his mistakes. He was contrite. He was turning over a new leaf not putting a leaf in his mouth.

No, of course not. Are you kidding me? Beau is Beau. But we know better … now. Now the only toy he has is a tennis ball and we keep doors closed, pillows hidden, counters cleared and so forth.