Beans

Beans Adoption Photo

Living on the streets of Dodge City Kansas must have been daunting, and we haven't been able to find anyone who is certain of how much time Beans spent navigating the hidden corners and alleys before he was caught, cleaned up and after a series of stops along the way, sent to Animal House, where we found and then adopted him.

He had been at Animal House for more than 6 weeks, and other than our House of Chaos, none expressed interest in him. We consider ourselves to be incredibly lucky.

Little by little we've found that Beans picked up all sorts of tricks during his time on the streets. He's taking his time at revealing them but our favorite to date has to be his ability to unzip purses, coat pockets, and backpacks.

While this may be a nifty skill and might one day have a valid purpose, Beans has had to surrender the contents of his tummy several times this year due to his impressive rummaging skills and ability to find any and all food or food-stuffs that we thought were safely tucked away.

Normally, this would be irritating but not a cause for concern. Yet, nearly every time that he's been successful in his quests he's gotten ahold of newly opened packets of gum. Xylitol, we've learned, is a considered by many to be a fabulous and safe sugar substitute in human foods, but it's highly toxic to dogs and the food it's in is irresistible to them.

The first time we zipped Beans over to the vet for an emergency, he won over everyone's hearts not with his small stature, his happy-go-lucky smile or wagging tail. No, it was that after such a rough procedure when administering active charcoal to sop up any remaining contents, he began licking it greedily from the vet's hand and sought more even after licking down several handfuls.

In all of her years of practice, she'd never seen such a thing, and when we arrived at the clinic to pick him up, the vet and her staff were fussing over him, to which he wiggled with glee.

After the antics of our Grey, Squirt, we learned long ago to never ask 'what's next?'... But sometimes I silently do wonder.