Welcome Scuttle, shredder of flip flops and swallower of gators

So after our dog, Clover, went to that great squirrel preserve in the sky, I figured we'd have a respectable period of mourning before we added another furry member to the family pack.

After nearly 17 years of dog ownership, I thought we'd take a break. Maybe even go out of town a few times without having to make puppy arrangements. Jet off to Rio, maybe. Adventureland, at least.

Of course, as with so many things, I was wrong.

The break was short, scandalously short, in my view. We are now, uh, blessed with a 14-week-old guy named Scuttle, or Scuttlebut or Scud or whatever name fits that day. He's a black lab mixed with several pints of  “Treeing Walker Coonhound.” He looks a lot like a lab. He bays a lot, like a hound. I sincerely apologize to our neighbors.

He's shredded our shoes (flip flops are his favorite), our periodicals (Scuttle has declared print dead, and delicious) and our household routine. Case in point: On a Scuttle-less Thursday morning, I might have enjoyed a cup of coffee, read the paper, made the children some breakfast, etc.

Instead, on a recent Scuttletastic Thursday, while my wife was away at the State Fair, I was chasing a dog, attempting to extract a toy alligator from his locked jaws. I yelled, and yanked, and shot him with a squirt gun.

But instead of dropping, dammit, he swallowed.

This was no ordinary alligator. It's a novel little toy that expands many times its size when placed in liquid. I had ordered the children to put it away. Wouldn't be good if Scuttle got that. Disobedience, it's not just for dogs.

So I called our vet, to regretfully inform her that my dog had swallowed an expanding alligator. She told me to give him hydrogen peroxide to induce a reverse alligator escape. I rifled through the house and called my wife, who had already been receiving frantic texts from my older daughter proclaiming the dog's imminent demise and her father's lost grip on sanity. I gently inquired as to the location of our hydrogen peroxide, an item that surely no home could be without. Surely?

Soon, I'm speeding to Hy-Vee to buy a new bottle. A big one. When you see a wild, disheveled person with severe bedhead rushing through a store, toting a large bottle of hydrogen peroxide, you know it's a bad morning someplace.

But it worked, really, really well. Ugh. And despite the acres of hard flooring in our house, it worked really, really well on the carpet. And after some unpleasant excavating, I found an alligator.

Remarkably, Scuttle still seems to enjoy our company, especially the kids. He walks with the girls to school each day, and when they cross the last street and say goodbye, he plops down and cries at the crosswalk. So sweet. I bet it's because they never made him throw up an alligator.