Milo likes chocolate...but not hydrogen peroxide

So I pulled my tired body out of bed this morning and noticed that the aches and pains I had been feeling all week had subsided and I felt like I might actually be able to accomplish something! Yay! I have been battling something ever since we returned from Guatemala. First it was asthma difficulties, then this strange bug, I haven't felt functional in a while. So I was looking forward to gaining some control here in the Fraize household!

Enter Milo the wonder dog.

I took Ian to the bus and just left Milo out of his kennel thinking there was nothing really he could get into.....right....little did I know that I was going to spend the next hour chasing him around the yard trying to make him vomit. Yes that's what I said, doggie puke. While I was at the bus stop, Milo managed to locate an unfinished (I know, shame on me for chocolate abuse!) bar of Ghirardelli's Intense Dark, 60% cocoa, mint infused chocolate bar. Yes, it was very yummy, Milo would apparently agree. All that was left were shreds of tin foil and paper. I was furious!! And not just because he ate my chocolate! I now had to call our vet who has notoriously in the past immediately directed us to call poison control (lets see now the past calls were because of the ingestion of two separate types of plant, a fire starter log and you guessed it, chocolate, in the form of one whole dozen fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, I wanted to kick him...but I digress). Do you know that Animal Poison control costs money to call? Uh huh, that's right, you have to pay $55.00 before they will even listen to your problem. Anyways, our vets office wasn't yet open, so I decided to call an emergency veterinary hospital (after all, they were very helpful when Milo ate a diaper over the summer, and didn't charge us a penny!). They advised that I give him 1 Tbsp hydrogen peroxide, wait 10 minutes and if he doesn't vomit to repeat. If he still doesn't give back the chocolate I was supposed to call them back. First hurdle, I don't have any hydrogen peroxide...I need to drive to the store. I get in my car, the battery is completely dead, won't even turn over (our portable charger met it's end a few months back in an incident involving a fire, but that's another story for another time, hee hee I love you Marcia...). Thank goodness Greg has been up half the night with work and has not yet left so I take his car. I don't feel like walking into the big grocery store so I try the pharmacy...surprise, they don't open for another 10 minutes.....ARRRGH! So I go over to the big grocery store, buy two bottles (one for today, one for the next inevitable issue) and head home. Greg has by now dragged his weary body out of bed (I recall screaming up to him before I left that I needed him to get up to help me make the dog puke) and has managed to shower. I measure out 1 Tbsp and escort Milo out to the back yard. He very trustingly let me open his mouth and pour the stuff down and immediately begins to dry heave, I naively think this is going to be over pretty quick. Ten minutes later I am, not so easily this time, trying to muscle Milo's mouth open for a second dose (he's not so trusting this time, and therefore not as dumb as I thought). Again the dry heaving, but no chocolate. By this time, our vets office is open and I decide to give them a chance. I called and explained the situation, they advised I try the hydrogen peroxide every 5 minutes, and to try 2 Tbsp at a time. While I was giving him the next dose, Greg held on the phone while they did some calculations (where were these calculations the last few times?!). Milo won't even come near me now because he sees the measuring cup I've been using, I have to put it down and sweetly call him over (he comes, trusting or stupid, what do you think?). I manage to get the 2 Tbsp in and watch him run around the back yard intermittently dry heaving, but still no success! Greg comes out and says the vet informed him that we can give him one more dose if we want but that at Milo's size that he could ingest 6 ounces of this chocolate (he's had 2 ounces at the most) before becoming ill, that he might be kind of hyper today and might have some diarrhea (can we say outside day? thank goodness for sunshine!), but he'll be fine. This is really not the way I wanted to start my day...the moral to this story is:

Eat all thine chocolate in one sitting! Rationing is for suckers....

after all, would you rather enjoy a nice bar of chocolate or spend the morning watching the dog dry heave? The answer is clear to me, eat your chocolate folks!!