When the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars. Sorry, that would be the Age of Aquarius, Age of Aquarius, Aquarius, Aquarius. Still, something aligned in the Ether resulting in a curious appetite and sequence of events for our dog, Wicket.

This is not the first time she has eaten something that we would have preferred she stay away from. Usually, it’s just those perfect little cat nuggets from the kitty litter box. Our current security situation and home defense setup keeps a gate between her and those delicious nuggets on the main floor and a basement door stopping her from the litter box in the downstairs. She developed a propensity for sneaking into the cats’ dumping station when we turned our backs and this eventually resulted in a disgustingly dire situation one day in our bedroom that involved some deep cleaning and locking out all living beings from the room for several hours.

When she isn’t trying to find nasty things to munch on, Wicket also likes to find her way to other items she should not be eating. A couple of times she has found a piece or two of gum in a pack on a table or in my wife’s purse and consumed them. We are aware that sugar-free gum is supposed to be poisonous to dogs, but she had lived through these couple of incidences with no ill effects. It’s not like we give her gum as a treat, but one way or another she has found her way to it. It doesn’t even help her breath which is unfortunate.

This week, the family was outside working on something. I can’t seem to recall what it was. Maybe we were being attacked by the sun. Maybe we were looking for David the Gnome. It isn’t important to the story. When we returned inside the house, my seven year old said there was a problem. I assumed he had spilled everything in the house. He showed me to the couch in the living room where Wicket was sitting with a small pile of Orbit gum packaging and torn up wrappers.

I didn’t panic because I remembered the couple of times this happened before. However, it was definitely more pieces this time. So by the evening, my wife was pretty anxious about the situation. When she gets into this mode, you don’t get to do anything else. You can’t get her to focus on another task.

This proved itself to be true when she was pregnant with our second child. She was 9 months pregnant and had just returned from a hayride. Yes, a hayride. I am not making this up. She started to have contractions. It was really late at night and I was quite tired. I am trying to lay out some excuses for myself. I settled on the couch in a super comfy sidelying position that made it impossible to stay alert. We timed her contractions as they began to get closer together, something around 10 to 11 minutes apart. Then, they were extending further between and I thought we were all good. No baby tonight. I mansplained this and I let my eyes close. I mean they were already well on their way. Why would I stop them? Not much later, she woke me up and suddenly we were headed to the hospital. The doctor barely arrived in time to deliver the baby.

I am not proud of falling asleep when she was clearly still having contractions. I have a lot of excuses I would love to talk you through, but I can feel her glaring at me from the other room. Let me say what I have been practicing for many years. It was my fault. I am sorry.

Now you have a bit of a feel for my wife’s intensity level and focus when she feels something is off and how I am often unconcerned. On the evening that Wicket enjoyed her Orbit gum, this resulted in significant research time from the internet on the couch. Once again, I was ready to do something else. I figured Wicket was probably fine because this was similar to past events. She figured I am an idiot and was not taking the situation seriously.

So there we were at a time we would normally reserve for watching a TV show, enjoying a snack and beverage, sitting at opposite ends of the couch. Instead, I found myself looking up signs and symptoms of dog xylitol poisoning. She had me call a dog poison center which I didn’t realize was a thing. Unfortunately, they wanted $59 just to consult over the phone. The internet told me symptoms usually hit in 15 to 30 minutes, but it had been over an hour with no symptoms. But it can take 12 hours sometimes, so there is no way to know for sure. The internet said to call our vet or go to an emergency clinic. Still, I thought it was an overreaction.

Thankfully, as one is apt to do at a time like this, she decided the best thing we can do are math problems. She found the manufacturer’s values for xylitol in various gum products. She also determined the expected lethal dose of xylitol for dogs based on their weight. So instead of watching The Mentalist, I was following along with a formula to determine Wicket’s weight in kilograms, then using the values of xylitol in Orbit peppermint gum to determine how much she would need to ingest in terms of a specific number of pieces of gum. I arrive at the correct answer and realize based on all of the research values, Wicket had eaten well under the number of pieces that was likely to kill her.

Meanwhile, my for real, brilliant wife who took calculus, organic chemistry, bio-statistics and other maths that almost no one likes or ever uses in their day to day lives, keeps getting different answers. What was she going to do? Pen, paper, long-form division. And here I thought that was something teachers had us do so they could have a break from us. Turns out, you can actually use it for real. And she did. This lead to her agreeing with my answer and the understanding our dog would probably be just fine aside from having poor dining habits.

The most exciting thing about the whole situation to me is the opportunity to use this for homeschooling. I figure she can plan it this way:

Teacher (my wife): It’s time for math.

Students (my kids): Can we watch a show?

Teacher: No, it’s still school time.

Students: Can we watch a show after school?

Teacher: Maybe. We need to do math now. Today we are going to calculate how many pieces of Orbit peppermint gum Wicket would need to eat in order for it be lethal.

Students: Ok. Can we watch a show after that?