This story comes to you from the depths of my memory when my two oldest children were very young and small and the littlest shits you have ever met. (They were incredibly cute with humongous blue eyes, so inevitably they got away with a lot!)

My oldest had just had a birthday party in January, we had just got my son a beagle puppy for Christmas. Just to set the stage as to my frame of mind and also the lack of the threat of Santa Clause so I have to find another way to parent. My daughter, as a gift, got a bubblegum machine that was also a piggybank. My oldest daughter was just turning five and she was quite clever, so instead of waiting to collect more coins, she just kept taking out the same quarter to drain the bubblegum from the globe where it lived. I didn’t care that she did this because I probably only had the one quarter anyway, money was tight in those days. It was all good with me…..

Until I see the beagle coming around the corner chewing a wad of bubblegum. I race over to the puppy and wrestle the gum out of her mouth.

~I just want to stop here and state that if you have ever wanted to know the worst job in the world to do….wrestling bubblegum from a growling puppy is probably up there. First the puppy is quite uncooperative, but so is the fucking gum. By the time I was done there was sticky wads of gum everywhere. The beagle is looking at me like I’m some kind of asshole and now I have to go and yell at my kids. Worst job ever, that doesn’t involve puke.~

“Kids, stop giving the dog gum!!!!” I yell out to the vacant ears in the house while I go in search of the two little culprits. I have learned in my years as a mother that yelling out to them before finding them, hinders the search. Those little buggers sure can hide. I finally found them in my daughters reading corner, under the stuffed animals, hiding ET style.

“Did you hear me? Stop giving your dog gum!!!” I look at them as I uncover them from the thousands of stuffed animals my daughter housed in her room. It looked like a Gawd damned refuge for wayward stuffed animals. Half of them also covered in gum, eyes missing, one got an unfortunate haircut, another with sad tattoos drawn on by some amateur artist.

“Why?” my daughter asks and then follows it up with her argument (super surprised she didn’t become a lawyer honestly) “She likes it.”

“It’s not good for her!” I stated

“Why not?” she asks

“Because it’s not!” I try, but she’s no ordinary child, so this doesn’t fly.

“How do you know it’s not good for her?”

I look at my daughter and I am always stumped by her questions. I don’t know the actual science behind this and I can’t bullshit to save my life, I always take it too far and lose interest and then try to circle back. I look at those big blue eyes and I want to give her an answer but I’ve got nothing.

“Because if I have to wrestle gum out of her mouth one more time, I am going to lose my mind. So stop giving her gum!!!!!”

(No I didn’t think to take the bubblegum machine away. I thought of doing research as to why it isn’t good for dogs to have gum! Yes, I do see where I went wrong! But now I was curious as to why gum wasn’t good for dogs.)

We didn’t have internet yet, because it didn’t exist, so looking into ‘why gum wasn’t good for dogs’ took a lot of effort and I had to be super committed to it. I read every dog book that I had lying around the house, which was a surprising number because my daughter was an avid dog lover as well as an avid book reader. However these books were not helpful in my quest. I was going to have to go to the library.

I bundle up my two year old and then ask my five year old to get dressed for the library. She was looking at me with this odd look on her face.

“What’s up buttercup?” I ask her.

“The puppy told me that she likes bubblegum.” she tells me.

“Dog’s can’t talk.” I tell her.

“How do you know? Just because they don’t talk to you doesn’t mean they don’t talk. They probably don’t talk to you because you don’t let them have gum or chocolate or anything fun.”

“Where’s the puppy?” I ask because I was going to put her in her crate so she didn’t destroy things.

“She probably ran away.” my daughter tells me.

“Did she run away?” I ask

“I don’t know. Probably!” my five year old tells me and then saunters off like no big deal.

I look at my two year old and he is not like other two year olds in the fact that he always says “Yes!” to everything I ask. (He’s going to make a great husband one day.)

“Do you know where the puppy is?” I ask him.

“Yes!” he nods with his big blue eyes beaming.

“Where is she?” I ask

“I no know!” He puts his hands up exasperated.

“Did she go outside?” I ask

“Yes!” he says and nods his little head.

“Did you put her outside?” I ask

“Yup!” He smiles and he is done with this conversation and wants juice.

I am looking out the door to see if I see this tiny little black and white beagle puppy. I do not.

“Can you even open the door?” I ask my two year old.

“Ye-es!” he says and he walks over and opens the back door. (Fuck for millions of reasons but most importantly because of the missing dog.)

“Can you please go look for your dog all over the house and I will search for her outside?” I tell my kids. My children start calling the puppy’s name and I run outside in the freezing cold to find my poor little puppy. My neighbor comes out and asks if I need help.

“I can’t find our new little puppy.” I say with tears in my eyes.

“I just saw a couple in your yard and they had a dog. I’ll go see if she followed them.” He takes off after the couple and I keep searching the yard and everywhere by my house. The thing that worried me is that she is so small. First how far could she go? and second how fast could she get there? and third how long has she even been outside?

I go back inside and my two children were wandering the house calling the puppy’s name.

“You didn’t find her?” I ask them. My daughter looks at me and shakes her head no.

I am so super upset about my poor little lost beagle puppy and there are my two children completely dry eyed. Weird, Right? I still didn’t catch on.

My neighbor knocks on my door and tells me that the couple didn’t see her.

“Do you think they’re lying? Do you think they stole your puppy? The lady looked like she was smuggling something in her coat!” So he was a little overzealous about things and now I have “this guy” helping me. He’s ready to drive down there again and ask them more questions.

“UMMMMM? I don’t think so!” I say.

“I’m going to go through the woods and see if they have her. Don’t worry if those bastards stole your dog there will be hell to pay!” He takes off running down through the woods.

Now I have a new thing to worry about. I probably should stop him but now I’m thinking some fucking creeps just took my dog.

“Mom are we still going to the liberry?” my five year old asks.

“Not until we find the puppy. I’m very worried about her.” I state.

“She probably just went somewhere where they let her have gum. She told me that it’s her favorite.” My daughter then walks away all smug.

I look at my son and I ask “Do you know where your puppy is?”

“Ye-ees!” he answers.

“Where is she?”

“She likes gum.” and he walks away with his big sister.

I feel horrible. My dog is missing. My neighbor is probably perpetrating some criminal act on my behalf. I stand at the doorway wondering what my next move should be. I had my head against the metal door when I hear the faint whimpering of a puppy. I prick my head up and follow the sound.

The sound leads me all the way into my son’s room and into his closet. There in his closet his hamper is rocking back and forth. I open the hamper and take all of the clothes out. There was the beagle at the bottom of the hamper covered in bubblegum. Those little bastards.

I holler out to them, “You two get up here now.”

My son runs to me and he sees his puppy and smiles. “You found her! My turn to hide.”

My daughter doesn’t come up right away.

I call her again.

Still she does not come.

I walk down and there she is pretending to be asleep on the couch.

“I found the puppy.” I say. She pretends to wake up complete with stretch and yawn.

“That’s good!” she then smiles and I know that she is going to play me.

“Did you hide the dog in your brother’s hamper because you gave her gum?”

“Which one do you think I did?” she asks.

At this point I hope that my daughter at least ends up on the right side of the law because maybe she would make a great lawyer but also a smooth criminal.

“I think you gave the dog gum and then she got it all over her and then you hid her in your brother’s hamper.” I said.

“Ding ding ding! You win!” she says “Good job, Mommy!” she kisses my forehead and heads upstairs. This is when there is violent knocking on my door.

My neighbor is standing there holding a dog and saying “If the cops show up tell them you don’t know me.” He hands me this Chihuahua and closes the door and hightails it out of there.

I look at the dog and I am ready for bed at one-thirty pm. This day couldn’t get anymore weird. But it has to because who’s fucking dog is this?

Moral of the story: Don’t be like Becki. I gave the chihuahua back to her owners, the woman tucked the dog back up in her coat to keep the poor thing warm. Also this is the same beagle puppy that got the crisco bath. If you don’t know that story look on my blog for “Are you giving your dog a bath?”

Until next time 🙂