I’m not sure how your Sunday went, but I’d like to recap ours with a product review for a dog toy from Chewy.

Our youngest Frenchie, Rosie, just had her first birthday. We spoil dogs so as to make every human’s first wish to the genie to be, “I want to come back as one of Mo and Jen’s dogs.” Accordingly, Rosie had a party complete with home-made, dog-edible cupcakes and a smattering of toys from Chewy. We’re both suckers for the “If you spend $50 more, we’ll throw in a $1 toy just for being a loyal customer!”

So, 15 Chewy boxes and an unnecessary gift-wrapping job later, Rosie was inundated with toys to share with her brothers (2 more Frenchies).

The overpriced gifts include a salad bowl with removable avocados, tomatoes and corn stuffies. It’s a toy with embedded toys to mask the buyer’s remorse of having spent a small fortune on toys the dogs will destroy in about 3 seconds.

As part of some sadistic BOGO scheme, we also bought Rosie and her brothers, a Pumbaa. That’s not a typo, it’s the warthog from Lion King. If you didn’t just sing, “When I was a young wart hoooooooog” just now, we can’t be friends.

Pumbaa comes with a … you know what, here’s the actual web description: “Exercise your pup’s mind with the Pumbaa hide-and-seek dog toy, available only at Chewy! This super fun puzzle toy features a real fan favorite, Pumbaa from Disney’s The Lion King, as the base with six delicious (for Pumbaa’s tastes anyway) bugs to stuff inside. Just give each one a squeak, hide them inside the base and watch as your pup sniffs out their plushie pals while bidding doggie boredom goodbye! Stimulate their brain with a game of hide-and-seek, featuring some of their favorite friends from Disney’s The Lion King.”

So, to recap the sales pitch, there’s a Pumbaa stuffed animal and six “delicious” stuffed bugs that all fit in Pumbaa’s mouth as a Disney-backed intelligence test for dogs.

And here’s how our dog (singular) fared….

Blu Bari Pi, our middle son, who you might remember from the recent ACL and patella reconstruction surgery. Or you might remember him from a SuperBowl Sunday trip to the ER. OR you might remember him from a horrific vomiting car ride. Anyway, that same dog, who has vet bills with a comma in the total, is running around the house with a worm that belongs to Pumbaa. His sister wants the worm and Blu doesn’t want to give up the worm. I chase them to make sure a UFC-style cage match doesn’t break out and instead watch Blu ingest Pumbaa’s worm like a frat boy chasing his tequila shot with the moth larvae from the bottle.

As icked out as I am by puke, poop and drool, I immediately sweep my fingers through Blu’s mouth. Unsuccessfully. Well, unsuccessfully in that the worm didn’t come up. Some breakfast did.

Fortunately our neighbor, Lee, is a vet and we rush Blu over there with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide in hand. Despite being in the middle of running a dog agility course competition and a canine frisbee competition, Lee helps us bartend hydrogen peroxide to induce worm-production.

Two rounds of hydrogen peroxide shots only bleach Blu’s beard (say that 10 times fast) and produce a foamy meringue of bile and peroxide. If I’ve just ruined your favorite dessert, I’m sorry.

So it’s time for a trip to the ER and as Jen is driving, she chooses my car, the previously-puked-in Wrangler with a hoseable interior over her cloth-seat new Bronco.

The archaic yet intelligent navigation system of the 2018 Wrangler sees me boarding with Blu in my arms and a concerned look on my face and practically drives itself to the ER.

We’re welcomed with a rousing rendition of “BLUUUUUU!” as if we were Norm entering the bar on Cheers.

They suggest another round of hydrogen peroxide mixed drinks and we explain the previous servings and results (sorry again about ruining your merengue affinity with the bile and peroxide mousse analogy) (shit, I’ve just ruined mousse for you too now haven’t I?).

Anyway, we collectively agree that Blu is officially cut off. Apparently, because of our frequency at the ER, we are part of the team of diagnosticians when it comes to Blu’s medical care.

But the diagnostics are pretty simple on this one.

The worm isn’t coming out.

We’re going in.

Well, not “we.” As a sympathetic puker and bleeder, I can’t be involved in my precious fur-baby’s invasive medical care so we leave that to the professionals.

Professional means it’s “one's main paid occupation rather a pastime.” So sayeth the internet.

Ah yes, the payment.

Taking Blu to the ER vet is expensive because it’s the ER.

Oh and it’s a Sunday, so tack on the weekend tax.

We prepay for an X-ray to confirm he has actually ingested the toy.

Meanwhile we go home and look through the house to see if maybe we missed it and he had spit it out and NOT ate it.

We even go to our Chewy past orders to look at the toy in its entirety to confirm how many little stuffies there are and cross check it with the ones we have left. We confirm we are indeed missing a 3.75 inch by 1 inch little worm.

The worm search call-off is validated by a call from the ER to give us an update on the X-ray, “We do indeed see a foreign object in his body consistent with a cloth item.”

My God people! Drop the technical speak and tell us, “Yea, we see the worm toy your damn dog swallowed.”

With the worm residency in Blu’s belly confirmed, they call in an internist in which is cha-ching because it’s the weekend, it’s the ER and the internist is a specialist.

A few more hours later, we get a call that the worm has been separated from the dog, Blu is coming out of sedation and will be ready for pick up and the worm is in a bag at the front desk.

So about 10 hours and one home equity loan later, we pick up our boy and one soggy, disgusting worm which can officially be logged as the most expensive dog toy ever.

And yes, the avocados, tomatoes, corn and Pumbaa bugs have all been thrown away lest they meet a similar fate in Blu’s belly.

Bottom line: we do NOT recommend this dog toy.