Chocolate, Puppies, and Ice
Источник: https://scottritter.substack.com/p/chocolate-puppies-and-ice
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Maverick (left) and Iceman (right) frolicking in the snow 
 This story begins last Friday night. I was at a reception hosted by the Russian embassy on the occasion of Defender of the Fatherland Day. I was approached by a lady from Belarus, who had seen an interview I had done last November, on the occasion of my first ever visit to the Belarussian capital of Minsk. To commemorate that occasion, she handed me a bar of Belarussian dark chocolate—100 grams of unsweetened chocolate containing 85% cocoa (these facts do matter.)

 When I got back to my hotel after the reception, I packed the bar of chocolate away in my backpack. Upon returning home the next day, I emptied my back pack of the essentials (computer, power cords, etc.) and zipped the backpack up before placing it on a stack of books near my desk.

 There it lay, untouched.

 Until last night.

 I came home after taking my wife to dinner. We opened the door, and stared in horror at what we saw—Iceman, my 2-year old Pomeranian, had the remnants of a bar of dark chocolate—the same bar that was given to me at the reception—on the ground in front of him, and he was busy consuming as much of it as he could (he had apparently smelled it in my backpack, and used his teeth to unzip the bag, gaining access to the bar. This is what my forensic examination of the crime scene revealed after the fact.)

 I quickly scooped up what was left of the bar, and ran my fingers through Iceman’s mouth, removing the chocolate that was there. As I did this my wife saw our other Pomeranian, a five-year old maniac named Maverick (yes, there is a Top Gun theme here) also consuming chocolate from the same bar. She quickly recovered this chocolate, and turned it over to me.

 I laid the chocolate pieces on the kitchen counter, and quickly determined that of the 15 “blocks” of chocolate that had comprised the bar (five rows of three ‘blocks” each, four were missing. 100 grams, divided by 15 “blocks”, is about 6.66 grams per block. Or a total of 26.6 grams of dark chocolate consumed.

 26.6 grams equals .93 ounces.

 Chocolate contains substances known as methylxanthines (specifically caffeine and theobromine), which dogs are far more sensitive to than people. Different types of chocolate contain varying amounts of methylxanthines. A 100 gram bar of dark chocolate containing 85% cocoa has about 810 mg of theobromine and 81 mg of caffeine—a lethal combination of highly toxic (for dogs) substances.

 A quick google search confirmed my worst suspicions: one ounce of dark chocolate for a dog weighing 15 pounds is trouble with a capital “T”.

 We had no way of knowing how much either dog consumed.

 We had to prepare for the worst.

 I called an emergency vet, who put me in touch with an animal poison center. 

 They agreed with my calculations.

 My wife and I were quickly on our way to the nearest CVS, where we bought a bottle of 3% hydrogen peroxide and a syringe. Once home, I administered one tablespoon of the hydrogen peroxide to each dog in order to induce vomiting.

 Neither dog enjoyed the taste of the liquid.

 Nor did either dog throw up.

 I spend a long night alert for any signs of symptoms of chocolate poisoning: Vomiting, Diarrhea, Increased body temperature, Increased reflex responses, Muscle rigidity, Rapid breathing, Increased heart rate, Low blood pressure, Seizures, Cardiac failure, Weakness, and Coma.

 Both dogs spent the night snoring, before waking me up at 3 in the morning to let them outside, before coming back inside and resuming their snoring.

 I tossed and turned fitfully, constantly monitoring them for any symptoms of poisoning.

 It had been snowing over the course of the past few days, adding a layer of several inches to snowfall which had accumulated to more than two feet in some places. The snow had fallen overnight, and the ground was covered with a fresh blanket of the frozen white powder. Normally, I would forgo taking the dogs to the dog park, simply because the road leading in would probably not be plowed.

 But this morning, overcome by guilt over leaving a bar of chocolate where the dogs could access it, and wanting to observe the dogs while active to see if there were any signs of acute poisoning, my wife and I opted to take them to the park on the way to me dropping her off at work.

 The roads were as bad as I had imagined, but we got to the park without incident, and the dogs proceeded to engage in a frisky, symptom-free romp before I gathered them back up for the onward journey.

 On the way out of the park, the dogs do what dogs do—jump around, and generally get in the way of my driving. As I shooed Maverick and Iceman off my lap and into the back seat, I took my eye off the road for just a second, allowing the car to drift slightly to the left—just enough to slide off the side of the road into a snow-filled ditch.

 We were stuck fast. The car had bottomed out, and the tires were fully encased in snow and ice. When I hit the gas, all I accomplished was to have the tires dig us deeper into the trench.

 We were about seven miles from home, in a fairly remote area with tricky cell phone coverage. Given the condition of the roads, there was no telling if and when someone might arrive to see out predicament.

 I had no choice but to try and dig us out.

 I had one of those long plastic ice scraper-brush combinations that one uses to clean a snow-and-ice covered car up in the morning before driving (yes, I had used it this very morning to clean my car up.) I proceeded to use this device and my hands to chip away the ice and snow, and scoop it out from under the car.

 I wasn’t dressed for outside activities, and the snow around the car was knee-deep in places. 

 I was working hard, but getting chilled to the bones in the process. I have fairly severe neuropathy in my feet and legs (I can’t feel a thing), and somewhere along the way my left show got sucked off my foot, leaving me barefoot as I was digging around the car. I was clueless.

 Things weren’t looking very good.

 Right about time I started feeling the first whisps of despair kick in, I heard a voice from behind me:

 “Dude, get back in your car and put your shoes on! We’ve got this!”

 I looked behind me. A large commercial utility truck had pulled up, belonging to one of the score or more contractors who had helped install a gas pipeline this past summer-fall alongside the dog park. I had previously cursed these workers under my breath, because I blamed them for the dislocation of a family of Killdeer and the destruction of the bird’s egg-filled nest.

 They were back to check up on how their work was holding up under the stress of bad weather. I guess they saw my pink foot thrashing in the air as I dug the snow out from under my car, and drove over to investigate.

 Two young blue-collar men, wearing boots and flannel and sporting baseball caps, stepped out. I got to my feet, and looked at them. I must of looked like a half-crazy old man, holding the car-scraper in one hand, shoeless, hair tussled up, breathing hard, eyes wide.

 “Seriously. Get in your car. Put your shoes on. We will take it from here.”

 I looked down at my feet. Sure enough, I was standing in the snow and ice, one shoe gone. I looked around, and saw it stuck in the deep footprint I had made on the side of the car. I retrieved the shoe, and climbed in the driver’s seat, watching as they pulled a snow shovel out of the bed of their truck and pulled a towing cable from their front bumper.

 Maverick and Iceman were barking their non-symptomatic barks in the back seat.

 My wife looked at me, a little concerned with what she saw.

 “It’s Karma”, she said. “It’s repayment for what we did for that couple in California.”

 A few years ago, my wife and I flew out to southern California to visit with my parents, who had retired in the Palm Springs area. Direct flights to Palm Springs were prohibitively expensive, but if you flew in to Las Vegas, you could spend the night in a hotel, rent a car, and after a five hour drive, be in Palms Springs with an extra $800-1,000 dollars in your bank account.

 That was our plan.

 About mid-way through the trip, an hour north of the 29 Palms Marine Base, near the Amboy Crater, we passed a car on the opposite side of the dual-lane road we were driving on. It had pulled off onto the shoulder, and had sunk up to its axles in the soft sand. There was a pregnant young lady, holding a dog in her arms, watch as a young man lay next to the car, trying to dig out of the sand using a stick he had recovered from the side of the road.

 “We have to go back and help”, I told my wife. She agreed.

 The young man turned out to be a junior enlisted Marine stationed in 29 Palms. He had received a 96-hour pass (basically a four-day vacation) from his command, and he and his expectant wife were headed to Henderson, Nevada to visit her parents for the holidays.

 Except they weren’t going anywhere.

 “We’re not digging you out of this”, I said. “We need professional help.”

 My wife and I told them to lock the car up, and for them and their dog to jump in our rental vehicle so I could drive them to 29 Palms and the closest garage where we might find a tow truck.

 About an hour later we arrived at a service station which advertised a towing service.

 We walked in and I went over to the manager and explained the situation. “He needs to get his car out of the sand, and then he needs to have his tires looked at and replaced if necessary.”

 I had overheard the wife whispering to her young Marine, “We don’t have any money.”

 I handed my credit card to the manager. “Take down my card information. Charge the toy costs and any tires the need replacing to my card. Throw in a 25% tip for yourself. But under no circumstances does that Marine pay a dime out of pocket for any of this.”

 We bade the Marine and his wife good luck, and got on with our trip. About an hour and a half later I got a call from the tow manager: they got the car out, replaced one tire, and the Marine and his wife were on their way. He told me the price, and said I had done a good thing.

 We didn’t know those two young people.

 But they needed help.

 And we were in a position to help.

 These two young blue-collar guys didn’t know me from Adam.

 But when they saw my pink left foot waving about in the air, they knew I needed help.

 And they helped.

 It took some digging, but eventually we got the car out of the ditch and back onto the road.

 I got out and shook their hands. I handed over a wad of cash. “Thanks,” I said. “We were in a bind.”

 They both waved me away. “We can’t take that”, they said. “No way.”

 And they wouldn’t, no mater how much I persisted.

 We shook hands.

 And we each went on our respective ways.

 Karma exists.

 I left the park with a renewed faith in the world.

 We live in a time where domestic strife threatens to tear our country apart.

 Where foreign wars and rumors of war loom on the horizon.

 People are struggling one paycheck to the next.

 Tensions are high,

 But if we just take the time to help out those in need, to lend a helping hand, with no expectation of a reward other than the knowledge you did something good for a fellow human being, the world would be a much better place.

 Play it forward.

 Make the world a better place to live in.

 As I finish writing this, I look over at where my two dogs are sleeping, snoring away, oblivious to the world.

 Symptom free.

 Chocolate, puppies, and ice.

 What a combination!

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