We Can’t Stop Staring at This Wiener Dog That Had to Be ‘Deflated’
This is Trevor, a four-year-old dachshund who, ordinarily, looks like this:
But recently, the Good Boy developed a bizarre health condition, causing a hole to open up in his windpipe, pumping air under his skin with each breath, and making him look like this:
His owner, Fran Jennings, was quite understandably alarmed.
“He’d blown up like a balloon,” Jennings told the BBC.
And he actually had. Trevor, who had tripled in size by the time Jennings rushed him to the hospital, was completely full of air that was building up under his skin from a rare health condition called subcutaneous emphysema. The vets had to “deflate” Trevor, opening up a hole so all that trapped wind could leak out before they patched him up again. Now, thankfully, he’s made a complete recovery, and his days of looking like a wiener dog version of Jabba the Hut are over.
And while that’s all fine and good, it’s a shame that Trevor—and really all dachshunds, for that matter—can’t just look like that all the time, if only it didn’t mean they had suffer through some obscure health complication that put their hearts at risk. “Funny” doesn’t do it justice. “Cute” doesn’t either. Perhaps the only real way to describe it is “hypnotizing”—because, for the life of me, I cannot stop staring at his glorious round sausage face.
Alas, as cute as dogs look when they get blown up like a balloon, or accidentally eat a bee, it’s no way for a pooch to live. Sure it’s amusing:
But at the end of the day, we’re just glad that Trevor, and all his other bloated dog brethren, have returned to their normal-sized selves. In Trevor’s case, he’s even back to his old shenanigans.
“Now he’s back to his normal self, chasing the chickens,” Jennings told the BBC. “And we wouldn’t have him any other way.”
Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.
Follow Drew Schwartz on Twitter.
This article originally appeared on VICE US.