The Noisy Shrub

On my latest trip to Long Island, I was startled when I heard a shrub with a cough. I kept looking around thinking that perhaps a neighbor was walking by and was having an asthma attack. But it was much closer to me than outside the fence. 

I began to investigate. Waiting for the noise to sound so I could quickly move to where the tone resonated. As I got closer to the noise, I saw the faint outline of a fuzzy snout. I realized that my dog Foxy was the one coughing under a shrub – her so called ‘hut’. 

I worried that perhaps she had caught a cold or something then I remembered that moments before I heard the sound, she was playing fetch. Foxy loves to play a good game of fetch with a stick from a tree. There is quite frankly nothing like a good game of ‘fetch’ or ‘stick’ for Foxy. (Aside from maybe trying to catch flies by eating them).  

She can play fetch for a while. Once she gets tired, she liked to lie down on her belly with her stick between her paws and rip it apart. This often caused pieces of the bitten up bark to get caught in her throat. Hence the hacking cough she exhibits that often sounds like a 90 year old who has smoked 3 packs of cigarettes a day.

It made me chuckle. I asked her if she was ok and then asked her to follow me to her water bowl. She lapped up a good cup of water and the doggie TB that I was about to attribute to her finally vanished. At least until her next session of stick.