The Stick That Wouldn't Let Go

Juno is a Siberian Husky. She loves to run, she loves to howl at nothing in particular, and above all else, she loves to dig holes. Not cute little exploratory scrapes — full excavations. If there's a root in the ground, she will find it, and she will have words with it.

So it wasn't exactly a surprise one evening when she locked onto a root during our walk and started yanking on it like she had a score to settle. What was a surprise was what happened next: she suddenly stopped and started doing this strange mouthing thing, pawing at her face, clearly trying to dislodge something.

My first thought was that she was choking. Every dog owner knows that cold jolt of panic — the two seconds where your brain goes completely blank before you start frantically trying to remember anything useful. But before I could do anything, Juno shook it off, looked up at me like nothing had happened, and went right back to being a normal, unbothered Husky for the rest of the walk.

Crisis averted. Probably.

When we got home, something nagged at me enough to take a closer look. And sure enough — there it was. A piece of stick wedged snugly across the roof of her mouth, sitting right in the gap between her upper teeth like it had always lived there and had no plans to leave.

I did what any reasonable person does in this situation: I called a friend.

Together, we attempted the extraction. One of us held Juno. The other peered into the mouth of a large, strong, increasingly uncooperative dog and tried to work the stick loose without yanking hard enough to hurt her. Juno, for her part, tolerated this for about thirty seconds before making it very clear that she was done with our little medical experiment. The stick stayed put.

By this point it was late, Juno seemed comfortable enough, and I'd already learned my lesson about pushing my luck. I went to bed telling myself she'd be fine until morning — and she was.

First thing the next morning I called the vet, and brought her straight in.

The vet tech took one look in Juno's mouth, disappeared into the back, and returned approximately five minutes later with a very happy Husky who trotted into the waiting room with the energy of someone who had just been profoundly vindicated.

She came straight over to me with this expression I can only describe as finally. Like she'd been trying to tell me something was wrong the whole time and was relieved someone had finally listened. Which, to be fair, she probably had been — I just don't speak Husky fluently enough to have caught it.

She's completely fine, obviously. Back to digging, back to her roots (literally), back to winning every staring contest she starts. I'm the one who learned something that evening: when a Husky stops mid-dig to make a face and paw at her mouth, maybe don't wait to get home to check.

Some lessons you only need to learn once.