This is remarkably easy to do. I once had to leave a much loved 10 month old puppy for a week. Luckily I had two very good assistants at the time who agreed not only to look after the dog, but to live in my house whilst I was away so there was no trauma of moving for pups.

I gave one lad the run of a stuffed Petty Cash tin, I phoned the Vet and left a deposit cheque just in case any treatment was needed, made sure food was sufficient, gave last minute bribes to the boys to make sure my darling puppy was looked after: did it all.

And came back to a vodka drinking Pupski, really.

Brendan: Boozy Dog

He found a bottle of anti-freeze in the studio. He drank. The assistants found him and thought the vet was the only answer. The vet called the Oil Company that made the anti-freeze who said give the dog alcohol to flush his system.

So, using the ample petty cash a bottle of good Stolli, (Stolichnaya, Russian wodka), was bought and slightly force feed to a very unamused pupski. He bounced off the walls the whole day, suffered a dreadful hangover and lived to a hearty and healthy 15 years old, a lot for a Bouvier de Flandres. (He drank Guinness for the rest of his days, perhaps because his name was Brendan.)

TIP: On a serious note: be very careful with anti-freeze. It contains Ethylene glycol which is very sweet, and most dogs have a sweet tooth. Put chemicals on a shelf the dog can’t reach, even if you don’t know if they are poison or not.

ALCOHOLIC DOGS DON’T GIVE A FIG

As a boy I lived in Africa for a while. We had a great garden and a large Standard Poodle called Louis. One of the trees in the garden was an African Fig, and when the fruit ripened it dropped to the ground and started to ferment into alcohol in the heat. Elephants like to get merry eating these boozy figs, and so did our Poodle, although we had very few Elephants in our suburban garden. Poodles are good guard dogs.

So, Louis the Poodle would scoff down a bunch of Chateau Figs, lollop around the garden in a state of high excitement, drunk as a Lord, before collapsing into the shade of a tree to sleep it off. The next day we would find him in the shade, paws over his snout, whimpering gently, “Never Again, Never Again” in Poodle. He told fibs. This was a weekly occurrence through the fig season; he never stopped. Interestingly the lady Poodle we also had, Celeste, was teetotal. Just like the old Two Legs humans huh?

Louis’s other trick was to knock over drinks at parties, and once pie eyed stand on his hind legs. He would have to steady himself in the nearest (also slightly pickled) human’s shoulder who would turn around to find themselves staring a Poodle in the eyes. This was great for us kids to watch.

TIP: If your dog is an alcoholic fig eating Poodle in Africa make sure there is plenty of water available.

THINGS ABOUT SOBER POODLES YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW.

In the Pickled Poodle story above I mentioned two dogs: Louis the black male standard Poodle, and Celeste, the white/apricot female standard Poodle.

Did you know, just as a rule of thumb, that white standard poodles are as thick as a proverbial plank? Delightful, reliable, safe, beautiful but as the Americans say, “stuck on stoopid”. On the other hand the black standards are very smart dogs; in fact the cousins over the pond think they are the cleverest of all dogs, even Border Collies. But it might be where all the blond jokes come from, and it does make choosing a Poodle all that much easier.

TIP: Don’t get a dog that might be a smarty-pants when it’s drunk.

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