Sandy Meets Mr. Roughage`.........by Joyce Oroz

Don't you just hate it when people go on and on about their darling child or their adorable dog or their talented grandchild....your eyes become heavy, your chin heads south and then you're supposed to remain awake and remember the name of this outstanding subject of the conversation. I would never do that to you, my friends, but today there is one shining star I would like to talk about. This beautiful star eats her vegetables, wears glasses when she reads, interacts with young children and dresses appropriately for parties. Solow is one of her best friends and swimming and hiking are her favorite sports. Think you know her?
Since we just learned from Steven Snyder that a picture is worth a thousand words, you probably guessed that Sandy is my sweet side-kick yellow lab. She keeps all cats out of my vegetable garden, and now I understand why. I have a potted three-year-old kale plant that suddenly lost half it's girth. I found the missing half of the plant in Sandy's mouth. She thought she needed a vegetable boost, or some extra roughage, so she pulled off a section and ate it as if it were a callused brown carrot with a bit of greenery on one end. The green-fluff-end was too wimpy to eat, but the stalk was a delicious challenge. Sandy disposed of the knarly old vegetable stalk in mere minutes.

And then the trouble came. I found a stream of blood in Sandy's bowl after she ate her dinner. Next day, more blood in the bowl. Now I was worried, dreaming up all kinds of terrible diseases in my head. So off to the vet we went. After a full physical with blood tests, the doctor blamed the kale stalk which was what I originally suspected. As of today, we have no more blood letting from our very healthy thirteen-year-old lab who never met a vegetable she didn't like. She especially likes couch potatoes and Cozy Cat writers.