HoneyBaked Hams and Fat Dogs

My brother Cam and my dog CoCo. Don't you just want to cuddle up with that thing? The dog, not Cam. It's like holding a furry water balloon.

Last week I had to rummage through my parent’s photo albums to come up with the picture of our painted lawn. As I was doing this, I came across a lot of pictures of the single greatest dog that has ever lived. This, my friends, is CoCo. Adorable, affectionate and fat as hell. Please indulge me for just a moment as I bask in a little bit of nostalgia.

Now I understand that there are few things more boring than listening to someone else drone on about their dog or their cat. Most of us have childhood pets that we loved and we don’t really want to hear about anyone else’s. And if you didn’t have a dog, than you really don’t care. Demitri Martin has a great joke about the direct relationship between a girl’s cuteness and his willingness to listen to her talk about her cat. (That joke is at about 4 minutes, but the whole clip is genius.)

But I think this glorious beagle is a unique scenario. I mean look at her. She was 27 inches long and 36 inches around. We wore the same size of pants. Yet even though she was morbid in her obesity, she was always a happy, playful and energetic dog. She would weasel out of our backyard and just graze around the neighborhood all day. She would go over to 7-11 where they would give her all the day old donuts. They would then call us to pick up our dog. “You really should put that thing on a diet.” Thanks.

I had a buddy in college who lived about five miles away from me but went to a different high school. When he asked me where I grew up, I told him next to that 7-11 on 21st. “Isn’t that the one where that really fat dog is always walking around?” That’s right. CoCo was a local celebrity. She was the mascot of Oneida Street.

Sometime in the early 90’s we hosted my mom’s family for Thanksgiving. We moved the couches out of the family room and replaced them with folding tables from the Ward. There were a ton of people and way too many leftovers. It was a cold day so my mom stashed a spare ham on the porch in a Tupperware bowl when the fridge filled up. After the feast, when we were playing Risk while watching football, I heard my mom cussing out my Uncle Shane.

Now you have to understand something. Shane is a retarded asshole. He’s no longer married to my aunt, so he is in no way a part of my family. And I’m quite certain he has no idea how to use a computer, so I’m not worried about using his real name. Well, apparently the ham was missing and for some reason my mom was blaming Shane for stealing it. This was an untouched Honeybaked Ham. Those things cost like fifty bucks. It sounds ridiculous that someone would steal a ham but I wouldn’t put it past Shane, so I have her back on this one. Like I said, he’s retarded asshole. I don’t remember if there was an actual confrontation. I’m not sure if she was cussing at Shane or about him. But either way there was a ham missing and he was to blame.

Well later that night, I found CoCo sprawled out on the floor of my room like a beached whale, struggling to breath. She had a ham bone under her paws. When I tried to pull it away from her, she let out one of those “I’m really a wolf inside” growls that all dogs release when someone tries to steal from them. She ate the whole friggen ham. The entire thing. It was like seven pounds. She only weighed about 70 pounds (which is a crazy amount for a beagle). She was like a python that just ate a hippo. I could hear he stomach loudly attacking the unchewed hunk of salt cured pig that was lodged inside of her.

I don’t know if Shane was ever publicly vindicated. Probably not. And I’m not too concerned about it. Again, retarded asshole. That’s actually a insult to all the other retarded assholes out there.

This was one fine dog.