Once there was a little dog. His name was Happy. He had curly dirty white hair. He was pretty ugly, but in a cute sort of way. Happy used to be really skinny, as if he only had one meal a week. But when he came to live with my family, he learned how to eat, and eat a lot. Happy would get lots of scraps from the table. He usually ate everything he was given. Didn't matter what it was, he would eat it. He ate broccoli, chocolate, lettuce, and ice cubes. One time, we went to watch a football game at the high school. We had bought a nice cheese cake with strawberries on it. It looked very tasty. We will never know, though, because Happy used this opportunity to climb up on the table and open the box with the cheese cake in it. He ate a lot of it. It was funny, and we were surprised he didn't get sick. Happy was amazing. Unfortunately, with all this eating he did, he became very fat. He never was very active even as a puppy, so the lack of exercise helped him become even fatter. We could take him out on walks, but many times after a little bit of walking, he would stop and sit down. He was very lazy. Of course, he was also ugly and fat, which made it embarrassing to take him out in public. Especially with a name like Happy.

One day, Price Club was selling iced tea makers. We got one, and iced tea became a very popular drink in the house. Price Club also sold sweet-and-low, a saccharine based artificial sweetener. It has a warning label saying that laboratory rats who eat a lot of sweet-and-low get cancer and die. Humans are much bigger, though, and don't eat as much as a laboratory rat would. One packet of the sweetener is often too much for a regular sized glass of tea. Sometimes a person would throw out a packet when it wasn't quite full. If this person was careless, the packet would miss the trash can and end up on the floor. Happy's food and water dish was right next to the trash can, so sometimes a packet would end up in his water. All the packets thrown in his water by five people in the house drinking iced tea adds up to a lot of sweetener. Happy was fat, but he wasn't that much bigger than a laboratory rat. This means that Happy was eating more sweetener than anyone else in the house, and he was also much smaller than anyone else in the house, and thusly he developed cancer of the artificial sweetener. He had a huge bump on his right flank, and it was very gross. It popped a couple of times, spewing out large amounts of pus. He also had warts all over his body, perhaps from cancer or perhaps from fat oozing out of his skin, or perhaps from both. This made him even more ugly, and he was more fat. Even so, everyone still said he had a heart of gold. Although, now maybe he had a heart clogged with saturated fat. As if the fat and sweetener combination weren't enough to take our hero, he also developed diabetes. He was never brought to a veterinarian to be diagnosed, but we could tell he had diabetes because of increasing blindness and frequent urination. Happy would drink a large amount of water during the day, more than two liters on some days. That would be a lot of water for a human, much less an ugly little dog. After he drank a large amount of water, he would rush outside to pee, sometimes just barely making it outside the door. Later, he wouldn't make it that far, and he would leave trails going out the door. His blindness came on rather suddenly. It got bad, and then it got worse. At one point, he had to get very close to a person to see who it was. After that, if a person called out for Happy, Happy would look straight up, not being able to see anything at all. It was very sad, because Happy would try to go outside, but he couldn't see where he was going. One time he lost his way and wound up behind the freezer.

When he finally reached the point of great loss of bladder control, it was decided that Happy would have to go visit Heaven. If he liked Heaven, we would let him stay. Most people and dogs like Heaven and don't come back from their visit. Happy didn't come back from his visit. When we brought him to the animal shelter, a little boy was just getting a new dog, and he was very happy to have one. Then we walked by with our blind and peeing little dog. The parents of the little boy tried not to look too happy in front of us in honor of our dog's life. But they were still happy because they had their own new friend. I was happy for the little boy who now had a new friend. I hope his new friend lives very long and is good to the boy and his family. Maybe I should have told the boy not to feed the dog too many table scraps and to keep the artificial sweetener away from the dog's water dish.

Now Happy is dead. His spirit lives on in the hearts of everyone. Now we have a new dog. His name is Elwoood. He doesn't eat too much, and he runs around the house all day, getting good exercise. His water dish isn't near the trash can, so he won't get poisoned by artificial sweetener. Elwoood may be cuter than Happy(dead), but he isn't as gentle. He's still a good dog, though, and should be with us for a long time. Elwoood eats to live; Happy(dead) lived to eat.

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