The end-of-the-year soccer party was bittersweet. We had almost reached our four-year anniversary of moving to Holliston, Massachusetts. The four years were filled with change – new schools, new church, new jobs, new friends. We were all settled in, roots growing down and eyes to our future when life sent us another curve ball. We were moving back to Connecticut in just a couple of weeks. Connecticut held family and old friends, but we would sorely miss the life we built in Massachusetts.
Our eighth-grade son played on a soccer team with the same wonderful coach for most of the time we lived in Massachusetts. It seemed appropriate to host the soccer party – a thank you to the coach (who had become a personal friend), and a last hurrah for our son and his team. It was a satisfying day filled with comfortable adult conversation, good food and the laughter of a dozen seventh and eighth-grade boys splashing in the pool. Our rescue mutt, Maggie was in her element, trotting from house to pool, snitching a fallen chip or lapping up soda from forgotten cups. The day ended too soon, with player awards and a large sheet cake decorated in a soccer motif.
Standing in the yard as the last car departed, we wiped away a few tears and turned to confront the damage. Solo cups, paper plates and forgotten beach towels littered the yard. Inside the house were half-empty platters of food and lots of leftover dessert. I started cleaning up the house while my husband and children tackled the yard and pool area.
A few hours later, with the garbage collected and the house in order, we headed to bed. Half a sheet cake remained on the counter along with six cupcakes still in their grocery store package. Breakfast! Our family firmly holds to the belief that cake is a perfectly acceptable breakfast entrée. It contains the basic food groups – eggs (protein), flour (grain) and milk (dairy). Not to mention it is delicious.
In less than two weeks, school would be out and we would pack up four years of our life and move home. I tossed and turned as I tried to determine if “home” is a place or a state of mind. I finally fell into an exhausted slumber and did not resurface until long past my usual hour. I awoke with the sun shining full in my face. Odd, I thought as I struggled from sleep, it is so quiet in the house. The clock displayed 7:30 AM and I say bolt upright in bed – Maggie must be dead!
For four years, Maggie had been a reliable morning alarm clock. Although she does not bark, Maggie whines, yowls and snuffles us awake everyday from her post at the bottom of the stairs. Maggie rises with the sun (the actual time of day matters little), eager to embrace the day and anxious to eat. For Maggie, food is her number one priority. She typically greets me by “pogoing” straight up in the air and weaving between my legs for a brisk petting session before herding me down the hall toward the Holy Grail – her empty bowl. Therefore, this morning’s silence was ominous.
I threw on a bathrobe and descended the stairs cautiously. “Tick, tick, tick tick,” Maggie’s nails sounded on the hardwood floor as she slowly rounded the corner from the dining room. My first emotion was relief that Maggie was not dead, followed by curiosity about what she held in her mouth. It only took a moment to determine that it was the frosting-covered, bas-relief soccer decoration from the top of the sheet cake. I ran down the remaining stairs and hit the foyer in a skid, arms flailing wildly as I sought to regain my balance. I realized that frosting was smeared all over the floor, along the baseboard heating elements, across the foyer carpet and into the dining room. Yikes!
Dogs have an innate sense of right and wrong and Maggie shied away when I said, “Maggie, come!” She did not intend to give up her prized possession and instinctively knew her behavior was solidly in the “wrong” column. My slippers made sucking sounds as I entered the frosting-smeared dining room in pursuit of the cake thief. We did a few laps around the dining room table with Maggie firmly in the lead. A quick direction change on my part brought success and she reluctantly relinquished the frosting-filled cake decoration.
Maggie retreated to the kitchen as I stood in disbelief in the doorway. The box containing the sheet cake was destroyed; only crumbs of the marble cake remained. A trail of frosting and cake descended the kitchen cabinets and covered the floor. Maggie must have pushed and pulled the box all over the house as she feasted on her prize. In the corner of the kitchen lay the mangled aluminum tray and plastic lid that had contained six grocery-store cupcakes. All were missing, including the shiny foil cupcake wrappers.
I whirled around, calling “MAAAGGGIIIIEEE!” and located the culprit hiding in her crate in the corner of the kitchen. With her tail at half-mast and downcast eyes, Maggie crept out of her crate and approached me tentatively. Maggie’s normally compact body was swollen beyond comprehension. Possessing shorter-than-average legs, Maggie’s stomach was so big it hovered just a few inches above the ground, swaying from side to side like a pendulum. I flip flopped between hysterical laughter and anxiety she would spontaneously burst, spewing half-digested cake and frosting all over me.
Feeling a bit ridiculous, but sure that a dog who has ingested most of a sheet cake and six cupcakes (including wrappers) was considered an emergency; I dialed our local vet for advice. Holliston is a small town and our solo-practice veterinarian deferred Sunday morning emergencies to Tufts University Animal Hospital. I quickly dialed the Tufts 24-hour emergency hotline while keeping an eye on Maggie who furtively licked frosting off the refrigerator door.
The emergency technician made an inventory of Maggie’s breakfast, “Let’s see, half a marble sheet cake, white butter cream frosting, six vanilla cupcakes with icing and sprinkles and six foil cupcake papers. Is that all?”
“Is that ALL?” I repeated in disbelief. “Isn’t that enough? She looks like a balloon animal.”
Apparently, in the big picture of Tufts emergency calls, my cake-eating-dog emergency was actually banal. The vet tech calmly informed me that as long as the foil cupcake wrappers made an appearance in the next 24 hours, she should recover with no long-term health issues. Even the small quantity of chocolate she consumed was not dangerous for a forty-pound dog. All that was required was patience and a whole lot of quality time in the great outdoors.
As I hung up the phone, I heard a strange gurgling sound and a great cloud of doggy gas filled the kitchen. Maggie danced at the sliding door urging me to let her out. I needed no further incentive. Sliding across the kitchen, I flung open the door and Maggie dashed outside. Without a second to spare, the “The Great Cake Escape” began.
For the next 12 hours, I was Maggie’s digestive doula. I cheered her on as she dug holes and deposited each foil cupcake wrapper, expertly using her nose to cover them with dirt as if they were tasty treats to be retrieved later. I cleaned up after her many “sheet cake moments” with a soothing “It’s OK Mags,” and her belly slowly deflated. As time (and cake) passed, Maggie returned to her normal size and her noxious fumes dwindled to an occasional puff.
Amazingly, by evening Maggie was again her cheerful self, eyeing our dinner and begging for a treat; the digestive events of the day already a distant memory. She was thrilled to discover that boiled chicken was her diet for the next few days – in her eyes, a giant improvement over daily kibble. For Maggie, life was good – no regrets.
After dinner, I took a moment to step out on the deck to appreciate the late June evening and the sound of the tree frogs croaking. I smelled the moist, rich mud of the pond and marveled at the flight of the green herons against the pink sky. This particular pair of herons returned each summer to nest on our pond. They were one of the innumerable things I would miss about our life in Holliston.
Maggie gave me a gentle nudge with her nose as she joined me on the deck. I absently scratched her ears and she flopped down with a happy sigh, wagging contentedly. Like Maggie, I tried to embrace the present moment instead wishing I were somewhere else. Life was good - I just wish she had saved me a piece of cake.
