One Family Dog's Adventure at the Ice Cream Shop

One summer night in the early 80's my family decided to make a trip to Calder's in Lincoln Park, Michigan for ice cream. My parents had heard about this ice cream parlor from my oldest sister, whose son was on this particular trip with my parents and I and my mother's dog, Muffin.

Muffin was a mixed breed and weighed less than twenty-five pounds. He would eat just about anything and was known to get into the garbage when we weren't home, take entire boxes of donuts off the kitchen table and eat all but one, as well as consume an entire box of Godiva chocolate all without getting sick. This is why this particular story is so funny.

My sister had told my parents about how good the ice cream was at Calder's and said that we should try it, so on this particular night my parents and I as well as my nephew made the trip down Southfield Road to Calder's Dairy in Lincoln Park, Michigan a suburb of Detroit.

My father was unaware of the size of the ice cream scoops when he placed the order for ice cream cones for my nephew and I. What most places would serve as a double scoop Calder's served as a single scoop, so being unaware of the size of a single ice cream scoop at Calder's my father ordered my nephew and I double scoop ice cream cones.

This is where the fun begins. My nephew and I were between the ages of 8 and 10 when this story took place. My father brought out the cones for my nephew and I and we both began licking and biting them, all while laughing at how big they were and how fast they were starting to melt. This was a hot night, sometime in late July or August in 1981 or 1982, so the ice cream was melting faster than we could eat it, and there was no way that we were going to be able our entire ice cream.

Needless to say we became full and we didn't want to see the ice cream go to waste, and since we had brought Muffin along for the ride my nephew and I let him help us finish our ice creams. We would soon learn that this wasn't such a good idea for the dog or my mother who had the dog sitting on her lap in the front seat on our way home.

We had almost made it home when Muffin began to make heaving noises indicating that he was going to vomit, as well as beginning to squat to have a bowel movement. Before my dad had time to pull the car over Muffin had begun vomiting and defecating on my mother's lap. This wasn't funny to either of my parents, but it was extremely funny to my nephew who as we pulled into a parking lot to allow the dog out and help my mother get clean yelled,"I'm getting out first," as he pushed the front seat up and pushed my mother into the dashboard of the car, making more of a mess than there had been. I followed behind him thinking that if he got to get out so did I. We stood in the parking lot of a local grocery store while Muffin finished getting sick and my mother got what she could off her clothes.

Through the years my family made many more trips to Calder's for ice cream, but we did so without our dog having learned the hard way what can happen when your dog eats too much of a very good ice cream!