Or rather, the honking is back. In my last blog entry, I wrote about the slaughter of an innocent stuffed duck dog toy and how it’s internal quacker/squeaker thing was missing - mostly likely scenario was that it took the scenic route through a golden retriever’s digestive system. It’s still missing, and no - I’m not going to go exploring the piles of dog poo I pick up every week from the backyard - in order to find the quacker.

However, this week my dog started “honking,” which turned out to be a dog cough. At first I just thought that he managed to chew up some stick in the backyard and got a sliver stuck in his throat somewhere. Doing the sensible “mom” thing, I gave him half a loaf of bread (not at once, though) to try and dislodge it. It was whole wheat bread, so at least it was healthy. Right?

That didn’t work and he coughed all through the night keeping me up, and other than the annoying honking, he was acting normal for a dog; so I wasn’t overly alarmed. The next day I came home from work and he’s still trying to hack up a lung, so I loaded him into my car and took him to the doggie ER in town to see what he’d managed to do to himself.

The vet examined him and determined that whatever it is, it’s coming from deep in his chest, so she takes some $ X-rays…

Did you know dogs can get bronchitis? Me neither, but I do now. So now I’ve got five days of doggie antibiotics and doggie cough drops that supposedly taste like “beef;” although Baylor apparently disagrees because he spits them out and then looks at me with the doggie equivalent of “Are you kidding me, those aren’t aren’t real treats!” I’ve tried slathering peanut butter on them, but that only got them stuck on the roof of his mouth, which otherwise would have been fun to watch but instead I had to stick my hand in and get the pills out for a third attempt down the dog hatch.

I looked in the fridge and found a lump of my husband’s brie cheese. HA! Pills go down without a hitch and no one has noticed that part of the brie is missing (BONUS). My dog is now developing a palate for buttery cheese, I hope he doesn’t ask for a glass of wine with his next pill…