Dogs are not supposed to eat chocolate, we know this, and it has never been an issue in the past. Morty is a very lazy dog who spends most of the day sleeping on his side and the entire night sleeping on his back.
Morty doesn't tear into to boxes or packages on the boat, which lets us be very relaxed about where we store things around him. For the past week, he has been sleeping next to a gift basket we received without bothering them.
We left Morty at Maddie's parents house while we all went out for a few hours. This is a usual occurrence, and Morty simply sleeps on the couch with his toys while we are away. When we return, he is always excited to see us, and then calms down to his usual state of laziness. This is when we noticed something was different about him.
Morty never calmed down. Instead he began bounding around us with a limitless amount of energy. He then began running into other rooms and running back to us, a behavior that he never does. This is when we found the source of his limitless energy, chocolate!
Somehow, he managed to find and retrieve a box of chocolates from inside a larger box set on a chair. Morty is a Corgi, and their most notable feature is their lack of vertical prowess. He didn't knock or damage anything else in the room in the process, but he did manage to shred the packaging and devour the nine chocolate truffles there within. I have no idea how he managed to get into the box, as the chair was sitting alone along a wall. There was nothing in the vicinity that he could have climbed on to get into the box. Either way, Morty used his magical corgi powers to remove the chocolates from the box and reward him with infinite energy.
Based on his weight, type of chocolate, and amount of chocolate that he consumed, we determined that he was not at risk of poisoning. Instead, he was hyped up on sugar and caffeine!
Morty's chocolate goodness occurred at 1PM, so we decided to spend the rest of the day trying to wear him out. At 11PM, we were exhausted and ready for bed while he was still going strong. Morty ran around, jumped on the bed, off the bed, around the floor, back onto the bed, off the bed, and around the floor again. This continued all night long.
We tried to sleep despite his best efforts, but occasionally he would land directly on us as he bounced over the bed. This woke us up at various hours throughout the night, and each time we awoke, he was wide awake with his ears perked and eyes wide open.
When I get up in the morning at 5:30AM, Morty is usually sleeping on his back between our feet and the hull. This morning, he was still running around, powered by his mystical power source. I decided to take him to my parents house for the day and let him run around the yard with their dog, hoping that he would run out of power by the afternoon.
When I left Morty at my parents house, it was 8:30AM. Morty had been awake for the past 27 hours and electric for the past 19 hours! Hopefully, the Morty will crash and we can all get some good sleep tonight.
Should this ever happen again, I will be very tempted to put Morty in an exercise wheel connected to a generator. This would convert his limitless energy into a full battery bank in a matter of hours!
