Our first baby

I'm going to dedicate this entry to Parker this week, since she was our first "baby" that we got 9 years ago, when she was 2.5 years old. Although Parker has been great with Foster so far, over the past year, she had gradually been more aggressive toward our cats, to the point where we were scared for their safety. I was giving Parker one more chance after the last "incident" and unfortunately, she attacked Romano on Tuesday of last week. She has always been dog aggressive and in her old age (12), this ornery behavior was expanding. Due to her growing unpredictability, we put her down for the sake of our cats and Foster. There was no way to predict if she would go after him, especially once he was crawling or if food was involved. There was no way we would have been able to find her a new home with her issues, age, and minor health problems.
For those of you who didn't know Parker that well, she was a crazy dog...extremely high energy, food obsessed, frisbee/ball obsessed, dog aggressive; but, she was also very sweet, loved people, was a great running partner, and was super cuddly with us in the evenings (as long as we had drained most of her energy each day running or chasing frisbees or balls). The food obsession was one of the hardest things to manage around the house, and in her honor, I'm going to list all the bad things I can remember her eating (I'll leave out the minor offenses). She required may doses of hydrogen peroxide and trips to the doggie ER to induce vomiting post-binge, but she never got seriously sick or required surgery. Many of these things are toxic to dogs, but they didn't touch her. She learned how to open cupboards and our refrigerator. So way before Foster was ever born, our kitchen was "baby proofed". If you had anything to add to the list, please do via the comments.

Our house seems very quiet now, but each time I look at the cats or Foster, I know it was the right decision. She will be greatly missed!


1/2 lb of whole-wheat flour
2 loaves of pumpkin chocolate chip bread
3-5 lbs of cooked ham (pre-wedding)
A brillo pad
Half a container of Oil of Olay face lotion
TNTC (too numerous to count) brownies
1 lb raisins
2 grams chocolate (WAY over the toxic dose)
A bar of soap
A full pineapple rind
A box of thin mints
A large pizza
Binges that included pounds of dog/cat food, dirty cat litter, bird seed, trash
10 sheets of Nori (seaweed sheets for sushi rolls)
3 dead squirrels (all included prolonged tug of wars with me on walks...luckily I always had a plastic bag with me to protect myeself)
1 live squirrel
1 live chipmunk
1/2 lb sugar
Unknown quanities of tylenol, advil, prenatal vitamins, a container of Ice Breakers sour candies, a bag of cough drops, 10 tea bags (this was all in a single office-trashing event)
10-30 packs of gum (many with xylitol...also toxic to dogs)
5-10 chapsticks
Rat poison
1 box See's chocolates
About 3 days worth of baby poop from cloth diaper pail (then she threw it all up in the house)
Pounds of brewing grains (from the compost pile)
Pounds of goose poop from the canal path