I got home from a very long trip the other day. My family was happy to see me. The dogs were even more happy to see me, but just for a minute. I think they forgot that I had been gone two minutes after I walked in the door.

I had really good intentions about unpacking, doing my laundry, putting the suitcases away, fixing all of the things that had broken on the house while I was gone. I did do some laundry. I did fix a couple of things. I started to unpack. But then, I quit. My suitcases are still in the living room. They are almost empty.

Two days went by. Last night when I got home I found that the dogs had started helping me unpack. The smaller more evil dog (Weez O) had gotten into the suitcase and found a big bottle of aspirin and a big bottle of expectorant (gross).

Claude. Not the evil Weez O. Notice the sock in the background. That sock is no more.

He chewed up the bottles and spread the pills all over the floor. When I walked in the dogs proudly showed me what they had been up to. My son and I cleaned up all of the pills. While I was getting the vacuum cleaner the less evil dog (Claude) was considering eating some of the aspirin. Only then did I realize that they might have eaten some of the pills. Duh.

I didn’t have any idea how many pills were left in the bottles, how many we had thrown away, how many were in the vacuum cleaner. Darn. I started considering whether I should take the dogs to the hospital. They seemed fine but I didn’t have any way to know if they had been poisoned.

I decided to make them vomit. One time I accidentally made the smaller evil dog vomit when I thought he was eating a sock, so how hard could it be? I tried using my finger which was really stupid. Luckily the dogs tolerated this. They let me keep my fingers. Dogs create a lot of foam when you are trying to gag them. Yuck. I tried a spoon. I tried a bigger spoon.

Finally I looked online and found that you can make dogs vomit by squirting Hydrogen Peroxide down their throat with a turkey baster. I found our turkey baster. It looked like it might be from the first Thanksgiving. The bulb was shot so I taped it on with some psychedelic packing tape. My wife helped hold the dogs. It didn’t go well but after following them around the yard for 15 minutes with a flashlight they did finally vomit. The smaller evil dog had in fact eaten a lot of aspirin, and a sock. The big dog hadn’t eaten any aspirin. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Unpack your suitcase as soon as you get home.