Finnigan: The Constant Gardener

"Dogs have a different digestive system than we have," Scott explained as I cleaned up a mound of puke from in front of the Laz-y Boy chair.
There was actually a hunk of wood in it.
"How is that possible?" I asked him remembering the day my two-year-old Black Lab did her final curtain call after eating a dozen oatmeal chocolate chip muffins. "I think they're just stupid eaters."
Finnigan eats poo for one. Any mound he can get his stupid black mouth around. And he eats sticks.
He also jumps eight feet in the air to sample the tender shoots on the maple tree in our side yard.
Last year, he killed another tree by whittling it down during the winter months.
He is a constant gardener, ingesting all forms of flora and fauna, twigs and berries.
Note to self: we must rethink his diet.
When he was a puppy, he ate our prized tulips, the ones we had hoped to show off during the Ottawa Tulip Festival. He's such a voracious eater, I've simply been forced to stop planting.
A garden to Finnigan is an afternoon snack.
Finnie likes to bring big sticks home from the dog park -- which makes him dangerous and gross especially when we're entertaining guests. He nearly impaled me the other day. I actually have stab marks on my thighs.
Perhaps Finnigan thinks he's The Knight in The Canterbury Tales, jousting all comers as he bounces past them in the yard.
His other bad habit is coming up to me, or company, with a slimy stick that smells of fresh pug poo in his mouth and planting it directly on an unsuspecting lap, preferably one that is draped in silk or 600 count cotton.
We've tried everything: chew toys, treats, bones.
He doesn't like them as much as the sticks even though they leave shards of wood in his gums that Scott has to pick out of his teeth.
Just thinking about it makes me want to hurl.
Sticks and stones.