Recent Effluvia:

We have a fat, old pug named Bennie.

He’ll be 14 years old this year, so we don’t really give him shit about being husky.

I’ve heard that Pugs cannot eat chocolate. That it’s poisonous to them. No one sent that memo to Bennie. He’s eaten chocolate, literally by the pound. He’s also eaten a pound of fudge from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, hunks of soap and bath bombs from Lush, glitter, an entire bunch of bananas, brownies and a loaf of bread. Not all at once, mind you. He does have some restraint.

My favorite story about Bennie is when he stole the brownies. They in tin foil and up on a kitchen counter. Pug owners will know that this presents a problem as Pugs are verticals, ally-challenged. Bennie is prevented from entering the kitchen by a baby gate. How then, did he get to the brownies?

My wife found out one day, quite by accident. She locked him behind the gate as always and left for work. A minute later, she realized he had forgotten her coffee and headed back inside. Bennie was scaling the gate like a Green Beret. He turned, saw Lizz and froze mid-step with a, “Oh, this? How did I get up here?” expression on his doughy, wrinkled face.

So we know how he scales baby gates. Bennie also pushes stools up to the counter, which explains why our bananas were always missing. After stealing food, Bennie has the presence of mind to push the stool back, and creep back over the gate, hiding all evidence.

Clever bastard.

So, fudge. One day, he pulled his usual wall-scaling maneuver after smelling a pound of cinnamon fudge in the kitchen. Wrapped in tin foil. Which itself was shrink-wrapped in plastic. In a paper bag. No problem.

Slipping over the gate with the stealth and grace of an arthritic hippo, Bennie nabbed the fudge and devoured all evidence of its existence. Fudge. Tin foil. Wrapper. Bag. All eaten.

When Lizz came home, she found Bennie sprawled spread eagle on the ground—no simple feat for a Pug—making a low, moaning sound. He also appeared to be several inches thicker in the midsection, like an anaconda that recently swallowed a feral pig.

Lizz looked at Bennie, and he belched cinnamon in her face, giving himself away in the process. She put him out in the yard to poop but he just lied there in the snow, a miniature, beached whale. Hours later, his business done Bennie was back to business.

The following day, it snowed again. Our neighbor Margaret told Lizz that our snow looked “especially shiny, glittery and beautiful, more than anyone else’s yard!”

“Oh, that would be Bennie’s shit,” Lizz replied calmly. “He ate a pound of fudge and pooped tin foil all over the yard.”

Stay classy, Bennie.