Our Pug Ate Shrooms and Finally Understands Jazz Now ... But Still Hates It

One day, my mother-in-law’s pug couldn’t wait for Christmas dinner, so Suki helped herself to some mushrooms in the backyard.

Now, my hound dog comes from a line of canines evolved for olfactory work. Piper’s giant schnoz can smell every dinner in the neighborhood, even reverse-engineer the recipes from a whiff o’ shit.

Unfortunately, for Suki, a pug’s mug was bred to make people laugh.

Her nose can’t pick out the poison from your yard-variety mushroom like Piper’s can. So when Suki puked in the kitchen, I didn’t think much of it. Some of us figured she got a few too many dinner scraps. We ended up putting Suki in her carrying case to keep her from begging.

After the feast, Fiona released the mini mastiff. Suki was so excited, she got the zoomies and raced around the house. Except she didn’t make it around the first lap. She rounded the first bend and plowed straight into the wall.

Thankfully, pugs are good at smashing into things with their face. How do you think they got to looking that way? I was horrified when I saw her, until I realized that was just how she looked all the time.

But within 10 minutes, she got worse: wobbling to and fro, nosediving for the toy she was trying to pick up. It was then that the penny dropped and I recalled seeing brown rubbery bits in her puke. Yaya immediately took Suki to the animal hospital.

We were all terrified. Sure enough, the labs came back and confirmed our suspicion. They were shrooms. Fortunately for our little court jester, she was only tripping balls.

The vet said she’d be fine in a few hours, after the Zoloft kicks in and the, “flying purple elephants disappear” – exact words.

Melina told me to go say something to make her mother feel better about everything, so I walked her and Suki out to the car.

“G’night Jane! Sorry for not telling you Suki puked right away. You had worked so hard making dinner. I just wanted to clean it up without you worrying about another mess.”

I had a joke prepared, but was too afraid to say it in front of my mother-in-law. Jane must have read my mind, because it’s word-for-word what I had rehearsed in my head.

“Maybe we should get Suki to show us where those magic mushrooms are!”

We both laughed. “That’s what Lisa said,” she added. Jane had just hung up the phone with Lisa, her best friend, fellow nurse and soldier in war (i.e. Duke’s ICU). Jane retired from 40 years of service there, and Lisa can’t wait to retire, so she can go on long walks in the woods with Suki.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “I don’t think I can trust that schnoz of hers.”

Jane laughed even harder as she pulled away with her crazy dog.

Correction: None of us call her a “dog” anymore. That’s below her now. We call her “Suki Da,” which is Japanese for, “I love you” and is much more fitting for an enlightened being.

BONUS: Alternative titles

Our pug ate shrooms and …

- spoke fluent dolphin for 20 minutes
- now refers to herself as “The Vessel”
- now gives unsolicited TED Talks to the Roomba