A sticky situation for a cuddly corgi

Meet Bear, a playful and attention-loving corgi pup in Pennsylvania.

When longtime corgi fans Steve and Deanna A. set out in search of a puppy to keep them company, their hunt was more difficult than they had expected.

“In the middle of the pandemic, we'd been emailing around and trying to find a corgi—and it was just chaos,” Steve says. After numerous emails and attempted meetups, they found their opportunity with a litter of puppies. There, they met Bear—and the rest is history.

“We both just connected with Bear. He was super chill, happy to be picked up and be around with us,” he continues. "The second we said, 'Yeah, let's do this,' he was like, 'Okay, my work here is done. I've got my people,' and trotted off."

Bear quickly got acquainted with his new home. He learned the ground rules, but also knew how to push to get a little attention.

Steven says, “He knows what he's not supposed to do. He’s generally very good and doesn't mess with anything, but if he's feeling like he's not getting enough attention, he will go throughout the house and find something that he's not supposed to have.”

He adds, “You can tell he's intentionally doing it just to get attention; he really doesn't get into trouble otherwise.”

However, that attention-grabbing tendency has caused some headaches for Bear—notably when he snatched up some nail glue and got stuck with a Hambone nomination.

What happened?

Both Steve and Deanna work from home regularly, but on this particular day they were busier than usual.

Deanna says, “[We had] very little time to give Bear the attention that he normally has, because one of us [or the other] was working on a project most of the day.” So, Bear decided to grab something to get attention from his hard-at-work family members. However, he chose the wrong object to mess with.

Deanna adds, “I hear him chomping and I turn around and I see what looks like the inside of a dog toy—like fuzz.” Busy in the middle of a video call, she sent Bear over to Steven for inspection. Steven quickly realized it wasn't fuzz in the pup's mouth—it was foam.

Steven continues, “It was foaming, he starts chewing faster and faster—he's not panicked, but he's definitely like, ‘Okay, this isn't going the way things normally go when I chew.’ So, I hustle back into the room to find out what it was. It was nail adhesive, essentially the same ingredients as super glue.”

Bear had punctured the bottle with his teeth, and some of the glue got in his mouth. Steve and Deanna rushed him to the closest emergency room, where animal poison control was contacted. Luckily, the glue he chewed wasn’t poisonous, and he didn’t experience any serious health impacts. It was a scare for his pet parents, but Bear wasn’t bothered. “He's completely unfazed by this whole thing,” Steve remembers.

How Nationwide helped

Thanks to their Nationwide pet insurance coverage, Bear's parents were reimbursed for his eligible veterinary expenses from his glue snafu. Bear is now more selective in the items he chooses to mess with for attention, but his pet insurance policy is there to help cover any other mishaps.*

Steven says, “I think when we've told all these stories to people about the different escapades Bear has gotten himself into, people often react and say, ‘Well, that must have been expensive.’ It helps that we have pet insurance, and it significantly reduces the cost.”

Steve and Deanna take comfort knowing that if Bear bites off more than he can chew, they have the coverage they need. Steve says, “It's also nice to have peace of mind that, we're going to be protected from a financial perspective and we don't have to sacrifice any level of care for him.”