Make A Run For The Border

One of the advantages of having dachshunds is that they cannot reach any food in the kitchen that we don’t drop on the floor. My sister has labs and if food isn’t put on the back edge of the counter or the very middle of her island, it is in serious danger. Try as he may, and he does, Couper cannot jump up to our counter or island to snatch the leftover chicken. We know that he is not adverse to taking a sip of beer or milk when he can get it off the coffee table.

Our weak link is the kitchen table. The dogs cannot reach the kitchen table on their own, of course, but the chairs are certainly doable and they could reach from there. To our knowledge, they have never tried this. We like to think it is because our puppies are well behaved and would never go somewhere they knew they didn’t belong. More likely it is because the chairs are swivel chairs and they somehow decided that the dangers of jumping on them outweigh the rewards of what is on the table.

Until recently.

A day before Couper’s sixth birthday, Couper’s Mommy brought home a taco and a bean burrito from Taco Bell for lunch. She sat down at the kitchen table and had just finished her taco, when she got a call. She left the table for only a minute to look something up on the computer. When she returned, she found Couper, back paws on the chair, front paws on the table, helping himself to the remnants of her taco; some lettuce, some sour cream, some taco sauce, maybe some meat – the normal outflow from a Taco Bell taco. Upon seeing this, Couper’s Mommy shooed him off the chair. The bean burrito sat there untouched.

It is impossible to tell what got into Couper's head. Maybe he had been planning this for years and with the wisdom and athleticism of turning six, finally figured out how to get onto the swivel chair without killing himself. Maybe he has practiced jumping on the chair before, without our noticing. Maybe the lure of Taco Bell was just too much and he went for it.

However, if you work in the Taco Bell marketing department two things should be apparent:

• Now that Chihuahuas have gone big time with a movie and all, maybe it is time for a dachshund to be the spokesdog of Taco Bell. Couper is available and his salary demands are reasonable.
• Bean burritos must be awful. That a hungry dog, taking a chance on injuring himself and getting in big trouble, would rather eat taco remnants than a full bean burrito is not a good sign. Your only hope is that my Little Buddy is his Big Buddy’s Little Buddy. I wouldn’t eat a bean burrito on a bet. Maybe he hopped up there and asked himself, “What would my Big Buddy do?” (If Couper does get the Taco Bell spokesgig, we will spin this differently – “Taco Bell: Our taco fixins are great”. “Taco Bell: Bean burritos; door stops or caulk – you decide”.)

In the end, even though Couper has had tummy troubles lately, he did not get the runs from his little adventure. We have learned that we have to pay more attention to what we leave on the kitchen table, especially since we have since replaced our swiveling kitchen chairs with much more dachshund-jumping-friendly four legged chairs. Finally, we learned that bean burritos are safe around dachshunds and likely deadly for anybody else. I’ll take the chalupa.