Chewbacca and other stories

I have all these funny memories of Guinness I have wanted to share, but I just really, really miss the guy, so it's been hard to wade through all the emotion and sit down and make myself think and write about Guinness. But I think I'm finally at a point where I can.

You may have heard many references to all of the crazy things he ate or chewed up over the years, and those of you that knew him, know that he was definitely a champion in that department. The first time he ate something odd started not even a week after I brought him home, when he was about 10 weeks old or so. He was playing outside, and when he came back in he suddenly got really sick. I called our vet at the time, and while on the phone, Guinness proceeded to cough up several clumps of very sharp, pointy, dried needles from one of those pine type shrubs. I told this to the vet, and was put on alert for various signs indicating he needed to be rushed in on an emergency basis, and what to give him in the meantime to help. Luckily, nothing happened and he was fine. It just reinforced his belief he could eat ANYTHING!

Not long after, it was this type of behavior that prompted Brett to make the declaration that the only reason Guinness had a body was to support the existence of his mouth and jaws....he had shown his true colors, we didn't have a puppy, we had an Ingesting Machine!

From there Guinness moved on to bigger and better things. He never was one to chew up a shoe, instead, opting for bigger and better delicacies such as, oh, say, a love seat!! Or, perhaps an entire webbed collar, minus the metal hardware (that was a fun go round, involving me finding the buckle to his collar and wondering where the rest of it was, and my sister Adrienne, weeks later, subsequently coming to visit and declaring "what IS that thing over there?" My reply: "Oh, that's where that was!" It had been living in Guinness' stomach for no less than three weeks before being regurgitated on the living room floor!)

Another top story, and this was probably his biggest, grandest display ever (a work of art almost), this past New Year's Eve, Brett and I and the girls were at our friends' house for the evening. We came home around 2am (the kids were overjoyed to get to stay up that late) and we were all beat. I had just washed all of our bedding that day in preparation of a long night, and being able to come home to some fresh sheets and plopping into bed. Upon arrival, the first thing we noticed was that Guinness had opened the cupboards (again, it was his newest trick). He had selected a can of black beans, or maybe they were pinto, I can't remember, and had crushed it, yes, CRUSHED, with his jaws, and had flattened it into a pancake and had eaten all of the beans out of it.

If that wasn't good enough, when I went to the bedroom, I was greeted by a scene that looked probably not that far off from a murder scene. I was really freaked out. On the floor and on our bed was this red stuff, and the sheets were shredded. I really was afraid of what it was, but luckily after seeing the bean massacre, I had a hunch. Guinness had found a plastic jar of tomato sauce and chewed that open, too. He obviously brought it up on the bed and probably clawed at it to hold it down while he, yes, ate a whole large size jar of tomato sauce. I almost took a photo, because it was quite the site to behold, but Brett was really disturbed by the thought of preserving that for posterity (it really was a pretty unnerving sight). So, instead of going to bed, we were scrambling to find more bedding.

Other things Guinness has eaten, attempted to eat, or otherwise shredded over the years:

• Numerous canned goods (he perfected the can crush method, so we had to move our canned goods to a higher location)
• Entire loaves of bread
• Entire and partial rolls of paper towels
• Toilet Paper
• Kleenex
• Half a 25 lb bag of dried dog food (big belly ache and vet call for that one)
• 30-some birthday candles (overnight vet visit after raiding the garbage and coming close to needing emergency surgery, but it ended with a call from the vets after about 12 hours at the clinic. Vets: "We were just about to suggest surgery since we can't figure out what the mass we're seeing in his stomach is but he just passed a bunch of what looks like candles!" Me: "Oh yeah, we just had a birthday party for my friend Jen, there were over 30 of them!")
• Pan of brownies (surrounded by shattered glass, as he had jumped up and knocked the glass pan down to get to them...this is a story unto itself, and one I'm hoping my brother -in-law will write up for us, since he was the one at the house and discovered it when Guinness did it...I was off at the pediatrician's office with Mia, then less than a year old for an emergency, it was an intense 2 hours but all ended well.)
• No less than, say, 20 tv remotes (I started buying replacements in 2's knowing he'd find them!)
• Baby gates (if they got in the way of him getting to the kitchen cupboard, he'd gnaw or claw it off the wall)
• Stuffed animals, nun puppets, carrot stuffed animals and stuffed animal eyeballs galore!The kids lived in fear, and eventually we had to put them all up.
• Work gloves. I don't think Brett ever had a pair that wasn't found, stolen, and chewed up.
• Giant sticks (logs practically sometimes!), we have a photo of him dragging an 8-10 foot branch that had fallen in my mom's yard once.

That's just off the top of my head. We called him a Wookie because of the uncanny wookie call he made when people would come to the door, pretty fitting, since he chewed things so much that calling him Chewbacca wasn't out of order either! I'll return at some point, with more, but I would like to add, if you have any memories of things Guinness did (food related or otherwise) or any thoughts at all, please don't be afraid to post up. I'd love to read anything you have to say!

Until then...