4.
    Dogs are known for eating things they aren’t supposed to, and my dog is no exception.  He is part labrador retriever and upholds every negative stereotype that goes along with that.

    One of my family’s favorite stories to tell is that of the butter.  Now sticks of plain butter may not seem appetizing to normal people, to Scout they are heavenly.  One day we came home to Scout sitting at the door with a stick of butter in his mouth.  He was holding it as if it were a juicy bone and wagging his tail with utter delight.  Upon further venturing into the house, we discovered a shredded cardboard box that had once held four sticks of butter.  We had already found one in Scout’s mouth, but had no clue as to where the other three were.  Walking through the house revealed two sticks of butter in two other rooms in the house.  We never found the fourth stick...

    Scout’s butter fetish may seem odd, but it’s nothing compared to his fascination with soap.  For some unknown reason, Scout enjoys licking the bathtub in our upstairs bathroom.  Most cliche dogs just drink out of the toilet, but Scout would rather scrape his tongue along the porcelain tub.  Like the butter story, we came home to Scout greeting us at the door with a bar of soap in his mouth.  Following the same pattern as the butter, Scout distributed bars of soap in every room of our house.  I am not sure what he gains from acting like this, but he has done it with many objects.

    Another favorite anecdote that we like to tell at parties is that of the teeth.  Yes, teeth.  Scout ate my teeth.  I had two large teeth removed, and Scout decided that they would make a tasty snack.  We are usually very careful about where we leave things around the house, but we had just placed the teeth on the counter in a plastic bag, not thinking Scout would choose to munch on them.  In a split second he jumped up, snatched the teeth, and swallowed the teeth.  The next hour was spent trying to make him throw them up.

    Everyone knows that dogs are not supposed to eat chocolate.  Scout has disobeyed this rule more times than I can count on my hands.  He loves chocolate.  He simply cannot get enough.  My nana is an excellent cook, and Scout is a constant burden in her kitchen when we visit her.  During one particular vacation at my nana’s house, my nana had made triple chocolate cookies for us.  These cookies were chocolate with chocolate chips, coated in chocolate frosting.  Delicious for humans, disagreeable for dogs.  We stashed the bag of cookies far back on the counter and blocked the passage to them with containers and other objects.  Somehow, against all odds, Scout managed to get the bag of cookies and proceeded to eat eighteen of them.  He consumed eighteen triple chocolate cookies, and is still alive to tell the story, as well as make the same poor choices again and again.

    Among his other idiosyncrasies, Scout has habitually eaten rocks.  I don’t think any sane person could come up with a reason for why my dog would take pleasure in consuming rocks, but yet he still does it.  When he was a puppy, we had to constantly stick our hands in his mouth in order to catch the rocks before he swallowed them because it is not good for a dog to eat rocks, obviously.  On one particular occasion, my dad had finally lost his patience with Scout.  After picking up his ninth rock on the walk, Scout was happily chewing on a new stone when my dad jammed his hands in Scout’s mouth.  My dad then pulled his hand out, and in his fingers was a tooth.  Scout just swallowed the rock and continued walking, not even phased by having his tooth ripped out.

    These short anecdotes do not even scratch the surface of what Scout has eaten over the years, or will eat in the years to come.  Although he has devoured his fair share of indigestibles , Scout continues to gobble up anything that strikes his fancy, and we continue to call the vet on a weekly basis.