My dogs have eaten some amazing things over the years. Fortunately for me they all seem to have the constitution of goats. I have been astounded by the things they can pass one way or another.

My first memorable bout with canine ingestion of oddities occurred when I had my golden retriever pups, Amanda and Cassie. They were a handful from the start. I would not recommend obtaining two pups at the same time. The two were littermates and no one wanted to take Cassie because of some congenital problems so we took her too. We got two for the price of one. This turned out to be a poor decision for a number of reasons, one of which was that they liked to split up and go in different directions. They seemed to know that I could only follow one pup at a time so the other was bound to get away with something before I caught up.

I don’t know when the notable ingestion occurred. I wasn’t even aware of it for some time. Mysteriously, Cassie’s collar was missing one day when they were several months old. We were in the house going about our daily lives, nothing unusual, no roughhousing. Although I guess the fact that there was no roughhousing should have been a clue that something was up. The next time I looked at Cassie, no collar. It was no where to be found. I finally gave up. Days passed with no collar sighting. I became more and more puzzled. I did eventually find the buckle to the collar but that was it.

About two weeks later we were sitting around the house and Amanda started retching. It must have gone on for a while because I remember running to get paper towels and coming back to catch whatever was going to present itself. What presented itself was Cassie’s collar sans buckle. It was intact and still in one piece. In fact it was in remarkably good shape. Aside from being slightly slimy, it looked like nothing had happened to it except for the missing buckle. Amanda looked proud. She had continued eating and performing all other bodily functions as normal throughout the previous two weeks. I did not know whether to be impressed or appalled although I was thankful that no veterinary intervention was required. And thus concludes one of the tales of Amanda and Cassie, and Part I of What the Dog Ate.