Dec 16, 2021 4 min read

My Smoothie, the sheltie, is about the size of a very large loaf of Italian bread. I’d never made that comparison until this week, when a bread-related incident sent me scrambling for relief – for the dog, also known as Sir Smoot – and launching me into anxiety.

I’d made a big pot of soup, and by day three I was tired enough of it that I treated myself to a large, crusty loaf of bread for sopping. After lunch that day, I’d cleared my bowl but, as I would later realize, left the 4/5 loaf of bread in its paper bag on the table.

I went into my office for a few hours, and emerged to find the bread bag crumpled on the floor under the table.

The bread was gone.

I’d failed to push the dining chair back to the table, allowing Sir Smoot to use the chair as a step ladder to the table to grab the bread.

This was a problem of possibly painful and probably expensive proportions. Smoothie suffers from chronic pancreatitis, a condition that requires he eat nothing but brown rice and plain chicken breast. This I learned three years ago when his first attack of pancreatitis sent him to the veterinary ER for testing and treatment and an overnight stay that cost as much as my first used car.

As I reached under the table to get the troubling remains of the bread, Sir Smoot sat nearby and looked at me.

“What did you do?” I asked, waving the shredded bag in his direction.

I knew the answer.

Sir Smoot had eaten 2/3 of his weight in carbs. The dog-clogging possibilities of that were horrifying. I was facing the possibility that a $4 loaf of crusty bread would turn into a $2,500 vet bill.

“Activia!” I cried, heading to the fridge for a yogurt known to keep things lively. I fed the blueberry goop to Smoothie on a spoon.

“Exercise!” I cried next.

It was raining outside, so I put Smoothie on a leash and walked him around inside my house, 40 laps worth, during which the dog kept looking at me as if to say, “Is this leash really necessary?”

And then we would wait. As the hours passed, Smoothie did not seem to be in distress, but nor did he ask to go outside. Was trouble brewing with his doggie digestion?

To distract myself from the impending doom, I decided to wrap some Christmas gifts. I went into the guest bedroom to get the wrapping paper from under the bed. And as pulled out the rolls, there it was.

The loaf of pilfered bread, tucked under the bed.

There were no bite marks and no crumbs. My sneaky little thief had purloined the bread and stashed it away – for what? A later midnight snack? Because he was mad at me? Had my adorable little sidekick fallen down the rabbit hole and become a doomsday prepper?

Now, Smoothie is one of the most food-motivated dogs I’ve ever known. He would eat nonstop if I’d let him, and yet after going through the acrobatics of snatching the bread, he didn’t take a single bite.

“Good one,” I said, showing him the bread. To be honest, I never thought he had it in him – the sly craftiness, I mean. The bread, though – I was certain he had that in him.

Finding that bread under the bed was one of the happier events this holiday season. The stolen bread was not inside the dog after all. We’d avoided a painful and expensive outcome.

I might even go so far as to call it a Christmas miracle.