Butter, a couch and a dog

“As a dog returns to its vomit, so also a fool repeats his foolishness.” (Proverbs 26:11)

Those of you with a low tolerance for suspense may begin deducing from the title of this post and this verse that something unpleasant is ahead. Those of you with a low tolerance for nausea may want to skip this post entirely. Those of you with a high tolerance for tragic comedy may proceed.

I was sitting in “my spot” in the man cave watching an episode of Star Trek when it happened. Let me set the stage by explaining more about the context.

Setting the stage

1. I love Star Trek. I’ve been on a five-year mission (literally) to boldly watch every episode and season of ST (except for the animated series Below Decks).

   

2. “My spot” = the left side of an extremely comfortable leather sofa that was a fantastic Facebook Marketplace buy. We got it and the matching loveseat for the man cave.

3. A dog = Hank. Hank is a black lab, and for a couple of years, he enjoyed sole “grand” status in our home. Before Shepherd our grandson was born or our daughter Adelyn and her husband Braeden got Ziggy, Hank was was the grand-dog. His proud parents were Sam and Sidney.

4. Butter. We’ll get to that in a minute.

The stick up

Carolyn and I had run some errands. We were keeping Hank while Sam and Sidney were at Young Life Camp. Hank is a great dog, and we didn’t think twice about simply leaving him upstairs, roaming free while we were out (yes, we were idiots).

When we walked in the house, Hank didn’t greet us with his normal exuberance. His hesitant reservation and half-hearted tail wagging was our first clue. “What did you do, Hank?” prompted him to ashamedly lay down and look away from us. He would not meet our eyes. Nor would he answer our question.

He didn’t have to.

With growing trepidation, we glanced around the kitchen and noticed a wrapper on the floor. When I picked it up, I realized it was the paper from a stick of butter. It was very greasy. Uh-oh.

With growing alarm, we noticed that the package of butter - with six sticks of butter in it - was missing from the kitchen counter. When we walked into the
living room, we found four more wrappers - all empty.

Yep, Hank attempted to butter us up.

To the duet of “bad dog,” Hank went and cowered in the corner of the living room, lying down and looking at us with deep guilt. This is the look:

This wasn’t the butter incident. It was another “Hank, what did you do?” response-look captured from Sidney’s phone.

We alerted his parents to his misbehavior. They were horrified and embarrassed, as they should have been. It was clear that Hank was taking after his dad and our son.

We Googled “dog ate butter” and made sure that Hank got plenty to drink, and we took him outside and encouraged/waited on him to potty. We hoped that was the “end” of the story.

The couch

It was several hours later. I had gone down to the man cave and was sitting in my spot on the couch, watching Star Trek. Hank was lying beside me on the couch (in retrospect, I should have noticed he was more reserved than normal; at this time of the evening, he would normally still be bringing me tennis balls to throw).

I heard something burble. It wasn’t an alien on the show. I glanced around, in that second, somewhat confused about the obvious liquidity and depth of the noise I heard. Hank looked innocently up at me. It was in the hot second that Mt. Vesuvius erupted. Without warning, Hank began a stream of hot, thick, yellow vomit that pooled between the couch cushions. Its sheer volume was stupendous. I had no time to be grossed out. I was simply dumbstruck.

Hank jumped off the couch and stood looking back at me, as if to ask, “What are you going to do about that?”

I looked back at the couch in dismay as the pool of butter vomit slowly sank into the bowels of the couch, leaving only a greasy residue on the top side of the cushions.

And that’s when the smell hit me.

And that’s when I started yelling in panic.

Carolyn immediately opened the upstairs door to the basement stairs and yelled down, “What is going on?!”

I yelled, “Get some towels! Hurry! Hurry!”

Thus began the failed attempt to save the leather couch. We wiped. I shop vacced. We took the couch outside to air out (the smell was making me gag). Carolyn found great humor in my attempting to vacuum vomit out of the couch innards while fighting back a gag reflex.

Notice the plastic bone that Hank had been chewing on prior to the Great Butter Eruption of 2023.

This event became known in our family as The Great Butter Eruption of 2023. We had to throw the couch away. Even after several days of airing out, it nearly caused my own non-butter eruption when smelling the remnants of butter vomit still in the couch.

The day after the GBE, we found the sixth stick of butter, buried in the couch cushions upstairs. It was still wrapped. I guess Hank had been saving it for a rainy day.

The Proverb about a dog returning to its vomit is fitting. The comparison was to a fool that returned to his foolishness. We learned from our mistake, and Hank has not been left to free range in the house anymore when he’s been alone.