How dog who ate everything taught owner about life

I first realized a goat — and not a dog — shared my life when I returned home from work one night to find 12 round pop can ends scattered around the kitchen. The rest of each can was AWOL.

It took 3.2 nanoseconds for the visual to pop into my head. One of six Fresca cans lined up on the bottom of the chef's cart clearly rolled off when Bentley, my then-18-month-old rambunctious Old English Sheepdog was playing with one of his other toys in the kitchen, where he was confined for everyone's safety during the day. It rolled. It made noise. It felt cold. “It's a bone, right?” he clearly reasoned.

Chew. Puncture. FIIZZZZZZZZZ. That must have been a blast. So he did it again. And again. And again. And when all the fizzies were gone he thought, “Hey, let's take these babies apart and see what makes them tick.” By the time I got home, nothing remained but the pieces that just didn't tear quite so easily: the ends. Everything else was a gastronomic delight.

That was the first of many panicked calls I would make to emergency vets over the next 13 years as I became well-acquainted with hydrogen peroxide (the dog world's version of ipecac).

Over that time, my beloved four-legged canine companion consumed disposable razors, a pack of chewing gum, a handmade copper and glass kaleidoscope, a spool of crafting wire, a box of antique rhinestone pins, earrings and necklaces, half a container of PetSafe ice-melt, CDs and their cases, a nutcracker, a bag of alphabet beads, a bowlful of glass drawer-pull beads, all the eyes I'd removed from stuffed animals to prevent choking hazards and set aside out of reach (ha!), and my Whole Foods cookbook. The list, shockingly, doesn't end there.

He made pulling the individual threads out of the carpet an art form. Every pebble in his path passed through his system. And I should have called him Hoover, because even at the age of 14 years he was still walking around picking up everything he saw on the floor with the assumption it was edible, safe and dropped there explicitly for his benefit. Taste really was irrelevant.

Yet despite Bentley's predilection for danger, his first abdominal surgery didn't happen until he was an octogenarian when he dug a hole in the backyard of my new house, proceeded to eat the soil and unknowingly consumed screws and carpet staples that were covered in a toxic galvanized coating.

The sharp objects would have come out naturally — it had happened before — but not before the poison killed him.

In the end, though, after all the danger he'd unwittingly put himself through, it wasn't chemicals, razor-sharp objects or intestine-blocking objects that ended his life. His body, which supported his larger-than-life personality way beyond his breed's average life span, just couldn't keep up with him any longer.

Bentley, whose full name was Ch. Hytimes Shining Desert Son TT, died at the remarkable age of 14 years, 9 months. More amazing that he lived that long, perhaps, is the fact that he ever lived at all.

The B'st, as he was affectionately known, was born into a litter of 13 puppies — and was the smallest by far. His breeder fed the little “runt” through a tube, sending nutrients directly into his little tummy to keep him alive for weeks.

One of his little legs also was misshapen — it curved outward — because the dam apparently stepped on him badly during one of the rare times he was allowed with his siblings.

He spent his first weeks fighting for his life, alone in a laundry crate with heating pads to raise his little body temperature. Not the perfect beginning.

Above the odds, he survived. And when I brought him home at 11 weeks, he immediately went on a strict exercise routine — one-half mile of daily walking, plus running up and down the tiny hill in our backyard. Baby's bones were soft, I reasoned, and if I could strengthen his muscles, his leg would take care of itself.

Turns out I was right. No one ever expected the gimpy little runt to be a show dog, though his father was the top-winning Old English Sheepdog of all time. Bentley, again proving his mettle, claimed his championship despite the handicap of having an inexperienced handler (me) over the next two years.

Those ribbons hardly defined him. They simply showed his willingness and enthusiasm to go along with just about anything I ever proposed. Life was a never-ending series of adventures to Bentley, and he never met a place, person, bug, bird, frog or dog he didn't try to befriend and engage in a game of tug.

Of course, if you were glass or metal your odds of surviving unscathed weren't so good. I always reasoned that his oral fixations with dangerous objects were the fallout of never really nursing and actually being weaned from his mother.

In reality, I think those objects he ate were just so much more fun than kibble. And when it came to Bentley, fun was all that really mattered.

He taught me a lot, my furry little eating machine. Look forward to meeting new people. Live in the moment. Play a lot. Wake up every morning looking forward to breakfast and the promise of adventure. Never forget who matters most. Do what you love. Wait for things that are really important. Bring enthusiasm to everything. And, most importantly, live like you mean it.

I'll never forget him, and I doubt I'll ever share my life with a dog quite as special.