Episode Twelve: Hiccup The Stoner Recovery Dog

Recovery Escapades:

A Newsletter Of 2nd Chance Life Across Cardiac County Line Road

Episode Twelve: Hiccup The Stoner Recovery Dog

Small mistakes can expand, get expensive. Quickly. Violating a small pragmatic rule may have proven that recently.

In earlier posts I mentioned that for the first 4 weeks of recovery from cardiac surgery I was not yet 'condoned' for solo walks. That's sister or auntie or girlfriend lingo for what the CIA calls 'sanctioned'. Well one Sunday morning in recovery week 3 I was short my 7am walking buddy. I was in need of my morning recovery walk. As was Hiccup the Recovery Wonder Dog, the Pocket Beagle puppy whose (initial) mission in life is to aid my recovery as a cardiac patient (patients with pets recover better than those without; and I am all about improving my odds).

What to do, with no sanctioning walking partner?

I decided to be ambitious. Push it a bit, get a little burn on by walking Hiccup a mile's distance to the Jupiter, a favorite coffeehouse haunt. We'd get in our walk and Hiccup would enjoy meeting some of the early Sunday Jupiter House crowd. Share the love, share the puppy, play a round of "Je Ne Se Quais".

"Je Ne Se Quais" - this is a coffeehouse tasting game I invented. It pits the wits of Jupiter House barristas against my nose and taste buds. Barrista adds a shot of mystery syrup on top of a shot of vanilla in a skim milk steamer. Then I guess the mystery flavor.

Briefly the score was neck and neck until barrista David (marketing major at University of North Texas), pulled out trickier tactics - double shots of vanilla too plain to believe; or slipped a subtle demi-dash of pumpkin under a decorative Ghiradelli syrup swirl of chocolate flair. Sneaky, devious and entirely legal - truly David is well trained in the dark arts of advertising to distract the senses and mislead the appetites of consumers.

Marketing major barristas - coming your economic way to hypnotize your tastes and inflate conzumer desires once they matriculate. Caveat Emptor, conzumers - Buyer Be Very Wary. In all that you do, in all that you shop.

I think my hopes for winning a round of "Je Ne Se Quais" is what tipped over my judgment towards the stupid. See, David ain't barrista-ing on Sunday mornings. My chances for victory are better Sunday mornings. So I set out to walk uphill with Hiccup just 1 teensy mile's distance to the Jupiter House. Along the sidewalked way I take on a distracting cold sweat. A bit too much? Bah, press on!

This while I am too distracted to notice that Hiccup the Recovery Wonder Dog chews on anything he smells (he is a puppy and he is a Beagle to boot). And that chew list lines out as: a stick, a piece of bark, a chunk of pecan shell, a leaf, and - as we later find out - two chunks of hallucionagenic toxic mushroom.

I go back to the 70s when 'shrooms were considered an interesting, umm, day trip out of town. I didn't do 'shrooms but had some hippie friends at Texas A&M - chemistry and agronomy majors - who did such tripping. And boy howdy was my dog tripping, just like these classic psychedelic sea sailing trippers of decades gone by.

Hiccup barked at things not there. Standing transfixed and trembling, his head bobbled listlessly about before breaking into a manic sprint around the apartment. But his little puppy hind legs clearly were progressing towards a complete loss of motor control.That last observation was the clincher; clearly he was ill, in some kind of toxic shock. So off to the doggy ER we go, me and driver buddy Kenneth.

While on the exam table Hiccup up chucks twice. The emergency vet is not aghast, only more curious. We find amongst the goo two suspicious soft chunks of brown vegetative matter that later proves out the 'shroom hypothesis.

My ward Hiccup - he turns 17 (weeks old) and starts doing drugs under my distracted nose - and doing 'shrooms, of all retro things. At least my dog is not a crack head or meth junkie.

Things are better now, after getting Hiccup out of doggie rehab for just under $1K of vet bills. I am so much more vigilant now during our morning walks. Hiccup feels none the more free for this. Not since an ultra kibosh comes down from the heavens on his trailside tastings of cigarette butts, dirt clods, bird poop splatter, and ANYTHING that looks like a 'shroom.

I ain't dying 'cause I ain't lying, word up to the people.

Yours Truly and Ridiculously

From Across Cardiac County Line Road,

James Sullivan