The late, great K9 had a very refined palette, but she never walked away from a challenge. While K9 had a preference for beef almond ding, cardboard boxes and soy sauce packets included, she also never turned her nose up at the garbage, cardboard boxes, TV tables, hockey sticks, retainers, or mouthguards. One thanksgiving K9 and her partner in crime, Mittens, made a whole turkey disappear from the back of the stove; we never even found the bones.
When the cicadas hit Chicago in 1990, K9 spent hours in the back yard, crunching away on her new favorite high-protein snack. K9's biggest hurdle to greatness, and ultimately finest hour, was her battle with the bar of Clinique soap... and the soap dish; she had a few rough hours after we came home to find her passed out on the hallway floor and realized what she had gotten into, but eventually the emergency vet gave her the clean bill of health and sent her home.
K9 often would find bottles of TUMS in my hockey bag and eat those, plastic and all - I figured that she needed to sort out all the randomness that she ingested on a regular basis. Only once did K9 fail to conquor a challenge she set for herself, and that was the 5lb bag of gummy bears that she found hidden in my brother's bedroom - we found K9 sprawled on the floor next to the bag, which had been 2/3 eaten (including the plastic), completely sated. She pooped in color for almost a week.
K9 died in 2001, at the ripe old age of 13. The dog, the myth, the legend - she was born on the streets, and clearly could never pass up the opportunity for a meal, good or not. She was loved by all who met her, and is greatly missed.
