Some Assembly Required

Cora and her teeth cleaning chew toy.  Read on, you'll understand.

I have known for a long time that there are different kinds of people when it comes to food.  There are people who enjoy spending time talking about recipes, ingredients, and what to cook next.  These people typically discuss the next meal while they are eating the current meal, and get as much enjoyment from the experience as the actual eating.  And then there are people who consider food more as fuel.  Taste is important, mostly, but don't let taste get in the way of shoveling down some calories.  Those of you who know my family already know where our culinary preferences stand.  Dogs, as I am learning, also seem to have different relationships with food.  I have already met some dogs, picky perhaps, who turn their noses up at different foods, and actually seem to care what goes in their mouth.  And I have heard rumors, unconfirmed, of some dogs who will walk right by a sidewalk scrap if it doesn’t suit their palate or pair well with their evening kibble.  Interesting.  Well, that is not our dog.

Cora has never been mistaken for a picky eater.  She is more of a four legged Roomba that never needs emptying.  I thought that the word snarfle would be a good description of Cora eating, but according to the webernet, snarfling is really noisy, which Cora is not.  Maybe it’s because she knows that if someone hears her eating something she shouldn’t be eating, then she’s busted.  Whatever the reason, that dog could silently snarfle a whole turkey given the chance; cooked, uncooked, or otherwise.

Happily, Cora is finally understanding that we will feed her every day, so she does actually make chewing noises now while she is eating her kibble.  Maybe it is just the noise of the kibble rolling past her teeth, but it is better than the shop vac sound we used to hear as the food accelerated down her throat, so progress.

But that new dainty approach to the food bowl in no way makes a bit of difference when she is outside.  It makes no difference if she just ate before we walked out the door. It makes no difference if we are giving her treats every ten steps.  It is still 100% game on when it comes to the things she will put in her mouth whenever possible.  We used to have cats that would come in the yard before Cora arrived.  The cats left immediately once Cora moved in, but the cat poop, oh, that delicacy took weeks to disappear.  It was like some god awful month long doggy easter egg hunt.  Just when we thought she had eaten it all, surprise, cat crap breath coming at ya’.

Well, that’s just gross you might say. Not even close. Every walk with that dog is like some culinary scavenger hunt.  Some of the things on our daily digestive bingo card include: any food item covered in ants (tortilla chips can hold a lot of ants per square inch, FYI), any bread product of unknown origin and age (thank you Costco muffin for the dislocated shoulder), deer poop (but only if it’s fresh, high standards people!), half dollar sized puddles of I don’t want to know what, moldy clumps of mowed grass (the older the better on this one, apparently there are different standards for age based on food type), moths, beetles, worms, and anything else that crawls and is unlucky enough to find itself in the path of Cora’s nose.  On a good walk, she can tick off all those boxes in just a few blocks.

But even Sherlock Nose has as of yet been unable to assemble all the needed parts for her greatest accomplishment yet, her culinary masterpiece, the ever tangy, complete dead chipmunk. Not complete as in finding and eating a whole chipmunk at once. No, I mean by cumulatively eating body parts from a variety of chipmunks, eventually totaling an entire chipmunk.  I was considering making a little chalk outline map so we could keep track for her, but she can't read yet, so it didn’t seem worth it.  Regardless, I am pretty sure that the current tally is up to a head, part of a torso, and a tail.  There have been unconfirmed snarflings of appendages, but we are only counting ones we can verify.  And two rights do not make a left, so eating extras of the same appendage don’t count, at least according to the Michelin Five Star Chipmunk Eating Guide, which apparently I’m writing.  The latest snack was on a walk with Hannah where Cora was picking up sticks and dropping them, a new habit, but one much preferred to eating dead stuff.  That was going just fine until Hannah said, “Dad! That’s not a stick!” in reference to the detached tail in her mouth that I had thought was another twig. Too late.  Looks like chipmunk bingo just got another square filled in.

You know those drawings of cows sectioned off by the cut?  I swear that is what is going through Cora’s head. I wonder what cut she prefers?  Standing munk roast?  Really short ribs?  She is like those kids collecting the toys from Happy Meals.  “Just two more organs until you have the whole set! Some assembly required!”

And this is why we don’t do dog kisses.

And here's a couple pictures of her highness not neck deep in roadkill just to wash those images out of your head.

Even her ears were tired.

There must be something to eat in there.

This is Cora

 

This is Cora, our newest adventure.

This is the picture from Street Dog Hero that captured our hearts. 
We think Cora was around four months old in this photo.

This is Lila and Cora on Cora's first night in our house.

How it started:  Cora was rescued by Street Dog Hero from Mexico where she was living in a dump with her siblings.   She was pulled from the dump, spayed, vaccinated and eventually made her way to Portland and into a foster home.  While that was all happening, we were deciding as a family that we were ready for a dog and applied to Street Dog Hero.  We were approved and saw her picture on their website.   What felt like a million emails, phone calls, and decisions later, Cora was in a truck coming over the mountains to our home for a “three day trial”.  Obviously that trial turned into an adoption, and Cora joined our family in early August

This is where Cora was living before Street Dog Hero found her.

And now:  Cora has been with us for almost two months now and is figuring things out, as is our whole family.  We are starting to figure out who she is and what she needs, and Cora is finally starting to believe that we are really going to feed her every day and that we are really going to come back if we need to leave her alone.  That is the hardest one for her at the moment, but she is moving in the right direction.  Our family is also learning about life with a dog.  Who feeds her, who does the morning walk, who does the poop hunt, and much more.

This is when we knew she was starting to relax.

Hannah deciding having a dog to snuggle with might be ok.

Nightly puppy people pile.

This noodle dog might be a better napper than me.

And now: Like any good adventure, we really don’t know what's ahead.  We hope Cora continues settling into our family and figuring out the world of being a dog, but we know that it will be an interesting journey for all of us.

Talk to you soon everyone!