Death By Chocolate

In an apparent suicide attempt, Ivry overdosed on a 3.5 pound bag of chocolate chips from Costco this past Sunday morning.

Now before you all freak out, I just want to reassure you—she’s totally fine.

But still, when the family dog attempts to (literally) bite the big one—well, it’s an enormous wake up call. Clearly, our canine is experiencing some issues.

Is she going through a midlife crisis? Is she freaking out about her new silvery gray muzzle? Have those snide comments about her girth taken a toll on her self-esteem? Does she sit on the faded, ripped green leather couch in the sun room scratching at her ears thinking, “my grandmother was an award winning agility dog, while I’m just a fat suburban house pet?”

(Ivry and I are roughly the same age—she’s seven, or, in dog years around 42—so excuse me for projecting a bit.)

The facts are as follows:

I brought the boys home after dropping Jo Jo off at Sunday school. As soon as I walked into the house, I knew something was up. Ivry was prancing around on all fours snorting and pawing like a crazed bull in heat, which, given her age seemed unlikely, but I figured maybe she was having a hot flash.

She was so hyper we brought her outside, where she began racing up and down the lawn like she was on speed. The boys tried to engage with her, but Ivry refused to play ball, literally. She scampered around, banging into trees like a drunken sailor.

And then she started puking. Copious amounts of diarrhea-colored puke all over our recently seeded front lawn.

The boys went crazy. “Ivry’s pooping! Ivry’s pooping out of her mouth!” they chortled as I raced inside the house so I could call the vet.

When I stepped into the family room, I saw a sight that froze my heart:a formerly gigantic 56 ounce plastic bag of chocolate chips, sitting on the floor, ripped into shreds. A couple small gobs of brown were left on the carpet, but it was pretty clear—the dog had devoured everything.

“Oh my god,” I said, staring at the mess. Then I realized the pantry door was open. Ivry had managed to paw her way in and had treated herself to a morning of binge eating. Two half eaten loafs of bread lay on the floor as evidence.

“Ivry, what were you thinking?” I asked my agitated dog, who was pacing the floor, clearly in the midst of chocolate induced hallucinations.

She looked at me wild eyed and vomited on the carpet.

I started to panic. I had to be back at Sunday school to pick Jo Jo up and then I had to give a presentation about Down Syndrome to a group of bar mitzvah candidates. Chocolate’s extremely toxic to dogs. Ivry had devoured half of a chocolate cake almost three years earlier and emerged unscathed, (http://hallielevinesklar.com/2011/02/26/jo-jos-birthday-party-and-how-it-went-to-the-dogs-literally/) but this was clearly more dire. I imagined returning with my brood later that afternoon, only to be greeted by the sight of Ivry lying on her back on the floor, paws frozen in rigor mortis. The kids have had to go through a lot this year. I didn’t want to add the death of the family dog on top of it.

So I did what any desperate suburban housewife does in this situation—I called my soon to be ex husband and begged him to take her to the vet.

He did.

He called back an hour later. Ivry would need to be hospitalized for her attempted overdose, with treatment involving emergency IV fluids, charcoal administration, and stomach pumping, all for a grand tune of between $1200-$1800.

“Are you sure?” I kept asking the vet. “It seemed to me that she puked most of it back up.”

“I have never, ever seen a dog consume so much chocolate before,” she said flatly. “Never. It’s remarkable that she’s still standing.”

I sighed and gave her my credit card over the phone.

That whole afternoon, I couldn’t stop thinking about my dog. Was Ivry perhaps so depressed about all our recent household changes that she'd eaten an entire bag of chocolate (and almost two bags of bread) in an attempt to self medicate? Was this a call for help? Or had she secretly plotted a suicide attempt in an effort to reunite her humans in a smelly vet hospital waiting room, aka Parent Trap?

“I don’t think so,” my sister said when I called her after the kids were in bed. “She’s just a dog. She smelled chocolate and couldn’t control herself.”

Still, I spent the rest of the night eating my way through a tin of my kids’ leftover brownies and bawling over old puppy pictures of Ivry on the internet. Memories flooded back. Her third night at home, when she escaped Houdini like from her crate only to appear covered in poop on our bed. Those sub zero January nights lugging a 16 week old puppy down the elevator of our NYC apartment so she could make wee wee. That evening when she was bored and decided to eat part of our living room wall. The fateful night before we moved to suburbia when Ivry came down with a mysterious raging fever and had to be hospitalized for thousands of dollars at Animal Medical Center.

I called at 9 pm to check in on her.

“She’s fine,” the nurse said brightly. “She’s just lying here, looking at me.”

I wondered if all her fat had acted as a buffer to absorb the chocolate.

“Can I Skype with her?” I asked.

The nurse was silent for a moment. “Why we’ve never had that request before,” she said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have Skype here, so no, I guess you can’t.”

“I miss her,” I said, tearing up. “Can you at least put the phone to her ear so she can hear my voice?”

“Our phones don’t reach that far,” she said warily.

The next morning, the newspapers were filled with news of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s drug overdose. But thankfully, unlike certain aging celebrities, my dog survived. I picked her up the next morning. She was definitely subdued. I couldn’t tell if her mood was pure melancholia or simply exhaustion from having spent the whole night being force fed charcoal. She seemed slimmer, probably due to the fact that she'd essentially undergone a canine colonic for the last 12 hours.

We passed the newly opened Dinosaur Barbeque on our way home. I debated stopping. Maybe Ivry wanted a side of ribs after her ordeal? Then I nixed the idea. It seemed the equivalent to bringing an alcoholic to a bar immediately after they’d been discharged from the Betty Ford center.

Ivry’s been home now for almost 48 hours. That first night, she was on doggie lockdown. She was only allowed to eat chicken and rice and I watched her like a hawk (although at one point I caved in and shared a chocolate chip cookie with her. I ate the chocolate chips, she ate the white parts.) The kids have been instructed to keep pantry doors closed and to no longer feed her from the table. The point is, whether the overdose was accidental or deliberate, the dog’s well on her way to becoming morbidly obese. This binge-until-you-burst mentality has got to stop.

Still, I can sympathize. As another middle aged woman going through some major life changes, I’m well aware of the urge to overeat when you’re feeling down in the dumps and stressed. I’m on my way to Salt Lake City for a work related trip now, but when I return Ivry and I are going on a cleanse. Plenty of fresh healthy food and long runs to keep our spirits up so we don’t self-medicate with tins of brownies or fresh baked cookies or bags of chocolate chips.

And if that doesn’t work, I’m sure there’s a canine 12 step program somewhere. Or doggie rehab.