Nonfiction | October 22, 2015

Houdini, my cocker spaniel with a massive eating disorder, was fated to a death by gorging. Or so I’d thought. As a puppy, he chewed books and tampons and tissues and paper clips and pencils. Later he devoured whole newspapers, with their rubber bands and plastic sheaths still intact. Beyond bulimic, he gobbled up his own vomit. He’d earned his name for his ability to get into anything, including closed drawers and latched cabinet doors and, of course, garbage cans of every design. It turned out, though, that he couldn’t get out of things as easily as he got into them.

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