Story hard to swallow? Chew on it for a while

The human-animal bond is a strong one, but I'm still amazed sometimes at what people will do for their animals. I know people, for example, who treat their pets to an ice-cream cone before visiting the veterinarian. I've seen painted toenails, dogs with pierced ears, cats with a gold-capped tooth, dogs with rollers in their hair, many types of pet sweaters, even artificial testicles placed back in a dog's scrotum to keep it from looking empty. The list goes on.

But I have never seen anything to top what happened a few months ago.

The presenting complaint was, "just can't chew his food."

The dog was a burley bulldog that just stood there and slobbered continuously. Just looking at the critter, you couldn't tell anything was wrong.

The little lady that brought him in obviously was in love with this drooling rascal. The look in her eyes was nothing short of terror.

It seems that "Bule" had been unable to eat for a while. When I asked what the problem seemed to be, she just shook her head and said, "He hasn't been able to chew his food for about three weeks now."

Yet the dog was fat and sassy. He certainly didn't look like he'd missed many meals. Besides, why did she wait three weeks to bring him in, if the situation were so dire?

"Something is terribly wrong with his chewing mechanism," the lady said over and over as I examined the jowls of this spit factory of a dog. The more I looked, the more it became apparent that "ole Bule" had a dislocated joint in his jaw. When his mouth closed, his teeth didn't line up anymore.

I was amazed. How could this fat critter have made it so long without being able to chew? He could lick, though. Boy, could he lick. His tongue was about 4 inches wide, and must have been 10 inches long. He loved to use it, too. The entire time I was examining him, he licked his nose and my face. No matter where I moved, he could stick that thing out and give my cheek a good licking. By the time I was finished, I had Bule slobbers in my mustache, all over my glasses, in both nostrils, in my ears and all over my hat.

"How have you kept this dog from drying up and blowing away?" I asked.

"Well, I kept thinking he'd get better on his own," the owner said. "When it first happened, I thought it would get better, but it didn't. I couldn't stand to watch each bite of food he took just fall back out. So I decided to chew the food myself and then put it in his mouth. Some would still fall out, but he was able to swallow most of it."

I was mesmerized by the thought of this little woman chewing every bit of Bule's food for the last three weeks. She must have chewed it a while and then spit it into her hand before she poked it down his throat. I tried to picture it as she went on with the story.

"It didn't seem to bother him a bit for me to chew the food first. But, don't you worry, Dr. Brock. I know better than to feed him human food. You told me long ago never to feed Bule human food, so I chewed his dog food, hoping it would have everything in it he needed to get well."

Well, what would you have done at this point? I was simply amazed.

Do you realize how much food one would have to chew each day to keep a 50-pound bulldog obese? Can you imagine doing that for three weeks?

What must her breath have smelled like?

Why didn't she just get canned food?

I started to get a bowl of dog food for her to show me the procedure, but decided that everyone might just get sick watching it.

So we fixed Bule, and he went on to do just fine.

I decided this was the greatest act of owner loyalty I had ever witnessed. Man, what a job!

Dr. Brock owns the Brock Veterinary Clinic in Lamesa, Texas.