Rocks In His Head, Then His Gut

At the top of the page here, you see my fine furry family members Bingo and Cody. Bingo is the Collie, and she is smarter than many people I know. Cody is the black Lab, and he’s dumb as a doorknob, as recent events proved once again.

The dogs often like to sleep in the garage at night, away from the weather and passersby. So it was that last night they were happily sleeping in their kennels in the garage. Then a little after 3 AM, Bingo started barking and I went to see what was wrong. Turns out Cody had barfed up his dinner from last night, so I took the dogs out to the back yard, then started to clean out Cody’s kennel. And so I quickly found the reason for his distress; a small pile of pebbles sat amidst the vomited dinner. Cody had been eating small rocks!

I knew that dogs get into all kinds of strange behavior, but this was a little different. The dogs have each other and a lot of toys, they have plenty of food (Cody’s starting to get a gut, actually) and water, and I spend a lot of time with them both. I think this was an experiment, and hopefully Cody has learned from it. I checked him out, and he seems to be okay, with a good – if tentative – appetite and full mobility, no signs of pain or further complications.