Friday Flashback : Best Dog Trick EVER

Twelve years ago I stole myself a skinny, abandoned puppy on the end of a chain large enough to restrain an elephant and hauled his little puppy butt down to Mississippi to be mine. (you got it - another post entirely, that story) I loved my puppy. He had the softest little puppy lips, the floppiest ears and the lankiest legs I ever saw. I used to fold him in half and carry him around with his legs sticking straight up in the air. He looked just like a baby kangaroo that way.

We bonded immediately, the two of us. He was my constant companion and sidekick. He was a quick study, and during our first weekend together I taught him to sit, lie down, roll over and "die" when I "shot" him with my finger gun - "BANG!" I loved him so much that when he lost his puppy teeth, I would save them and line them up on the windowsill in the kitchen. I took him all around town with me - to the laundromat, the market, to Sonic for a vanilla ice cream dish - I once even told my neighbor, a new mother, that I would be afraid to have children because, get this, I did not think I could possibly love my babies as much as I loved my dog. Yeah, I really did say that.

Yeah, she did look at me like I had just sprouted another head. I know, it seems ridiculous to me now, too.

Anyway, there was just one thing that kept Montana from being the perfect dog. His sensitive stomach. For a while there we couldn't get through a day when I didn't walk across the floor and step in a puddle of yellow, slimy dog bile. This was definitely putting a strain on our relationship and I had to think of a way around it. I decided a dog that could learn four tricks over the course of a weekend was smart enough to learn what to do when his indigestion kicked in. Why, I would just teach him to throw up in the toilet like any other member of the family!

Thus, the training regimen commenced. This was a tall mountain to climb since it's not a trick you can practice on a whim. You have to be in the right place at the right time to teach the appropriate technique. So for the next couple of months, whenever I would hear that familiar retching sound, I would run to him screaming and clapping, then grab his front legs and walk him to the toilet on his hind legs, then I would place his front paws on the toilet seat and hold his sweet floppy ears back and like magic, he would end up hurling in the toilet bowl. Over the course of the summer I got him to where he would recognize my screaming and clapping and head to the bathroom himself. Sometimes he wouldn't quite make it in the toilet, but he eventually got to the point that if he had puked when I was out, the puddle would always be beside the toilet bowl. This became so routine for us that neither one of us thought anything about it anymore.

Then there came a day when I moved back to Missouri from Mississippi. I was constantly teased by my family over my treatment of my dog, who in my opinion was only the best dog EVER. They had to admit they were impressed with his repertoire of tricks, but nothing topped the day when my mother walked into my house to find me holding Tanner's ears back while he was puking into the toilet. I had no idea she was even there, until I heard her exclaim from the hallway, "Well, I've seen it ALL now!!"

And to think I ended up in the insurance industry when I could have had a lustrous and lucrative career as a dog trainer. Face it, Cesar Millan's got nothing on this trick!
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