Oh, Vinnie...No more eating dead rodents

So, you've no doubt seen pictures of the cutest pup ever on our blog recently. Vinnie has me wrapped around his little...hmmm...paw? and he just has to look up at me with those cute little puppy eyes and he gets pretty much whatever he wants, most of the time.

Yesterday, Vinnie and I had a little bonding moment on our afternoon walk. We had a great morning, he let me finish the dishes, laundry and a test for my online class with no problems! So I had pretty high expectations for our walk. One thing you need to know about Vinnie and walks is that he is a total hound dog which means he HAS to smell EVERYTHING and eat a few things too

for at least the first half an hour. He especially likes to snack on stinky things like dead worms, slugs, moldy grass and the occasional poop. We try our hardest to keep him away from these things but sometimes he's just too fast and finds one before we do.

So, we were on our walk and he was doing his thing sniffing and snacking. We had walked for about 20 minutes so I was ready for the shift to normal walking and less hounding. So we started our course to the park. We have walked by a fenced off construction zone almost every day for the past three weeks so I was just going along enjoying the walk. Vinnie usually sniffs around in some bushes just at the edge of the fence so I let him do his thing...when all of a sudden he makes his classic gobbling something down move (you know the one, head back, teeth chomping, tongue licking, kind of like a Velociraptor). Well I move in to get a closer look and take the "poop" out of his mouth only to see fur and little teeth on the thing he was chewing!!!!!

I almost puked right there but I knew I had to pull it together and get whatever it was out of Vinnie's mouth! I looked around for any help I could find but time was running out and he was relentlessly chomping and chomping. I had to act quick so I just held my breath, bent down, grabbed Vinnies jaws...and remembered that I had a handy little poop scoop bag in my pocket!

(side note: I have an ingenious idea about poop bag stations but I'll save that for a later date) So I yank the bag out of my pocket and reach into the jaws of death grabbing and pulling the best I could against Vinnie's ferocious appetite. Yes, I got it! Or so I thought. The instant I threw the first chunk away, I look back and realize (this gets pretty graphic...) that the other half of the rodent is still in his mouth!!!! At this point I'm thinking, "What! I have to reach in there again! Come on! Just drop it Vinnie it can't be tastier than the delicious meat treats we feed you at home!" But I have to go back in. I held my breath again and pried his teeth apart just long enough to whip the last part of the rodent out and across the sidewalk.

Vinnie was not a happy camper. He bee-lined straight for it again and I pulled him away. At this point I was holding back tears of frustration, grossed-out-ness and sadness that my cute little puppy could eat something so horrible. But I again pulled myself together and marched straight home with Vinnie in tow. Did I mention that the rat-thing had ants on it that had crawled onto my hand that I just now noticed half-way home!!!!! Oh my gosh, I'm getting sick just writing about it...let's move on to the clean-up.

I had to clean myself up before I could even think about Vinnie, so I put my nervous, confused little pup in his pen and scrubbed my hands and arms and anything else that might have contacted "the rodent". I headed back to the kitchen and took Vinnie straight to the tub. He got a full scrubbing, including his mouth, which I then brushed with his doggy toothbrush and paste several times and fed him some good food to wash it all down while saying the whole time, "This is good food, Vinnie. This is what we eat, not nasty rats by the side of the road." I sure hope he understood me.

Needless to say, Vinnie was kind of freaked out by my obsessive compulsive need to wash his entire body and mouth several times after eating a simple "snack". So he did laps around the house every time I got near him for the next hour. I knew he was clean and safe and that's all that mattered. We're totally friends again. I will think extra hard though before I let him sniff around in any more bushes.

James wanted to get some digital evidence of the incident so we went back to the scene of the crime and found this...

The head...which I ripped out first

and the decapitated body which I ripped out second.

After all that Vinnie is still a great doggie and I wouldn't trade him for anything...I only wish his natural instincts were a little less keen at times.