Last month it was the mystery of "who peed on the floor?" This week, the new mystery requiring some canine sleuthing was "who puked?"

My wife arrived home on Monday afternoon to find the rug in the basement decorated with the partially digested remains of someone's breakfast. As regular readers (hi Mom!) will recall, Remy and Barrett have been sequestered to the basement ever since someone decided that the living room rug was a good place to pee. That rug has since been relocated to the basement. Guess where we found the puke?

One instance of vomit is not something that causes major concern in our house, especially during the spring. The dogs get the chance to spend more time in the yard, and the grass intake in their diet generally increases, with some of it coming back up on occasion. But this turned out to be a recurring problem.

We found new deposits on Tuesday morning and Tuesday afternoon. Someone wasn't keeping any food down, but neither of the girls was acting sick. Both were eager to eat their dinner on Tuesday night, and were equally eager to go out and play in the yard.

In order to determine the culprit, I shut both dogs in the bedroom with me on Tuesday night, and sure enough, I woke to the sound of retching at the foot the bed around 12:30 a.m. Turning on the bedside light, I discovered Barrett standing over another pile, looking a bit sorry for herself. Remy was splayed out on a dog bed in the corner, so I was pretty sure who had the sick tummy.

In order to be 100% sure before going the vet, I shut the girls in separate rooms when I left for work on Wednesday. Jen arrived home early and found that Barrett had indeed thrown up most of her breakfast. The rest came up a few minutes later in the back yard.

We've since been to the vet, and had no more incidents, but we're still a bit in the dark as to the diagnosis. Our two leading theories involve Barrett eating something she shouldn't have over the weekend.

The dogs spent Saturday at my parents' house while we ran errands. When I returned to pick them up, Barrett ran out the door and started eating coffee grounds deposited behind a tree by a guest of my parents. It was the same tree where I've discovered Barrett eating berries and deer droppings in the past.

The second, and somewhat more ominous possibility occurred later that night. One of our Saturday errands was to pick up dog food at Stonington Feeds in Mystic, where the good people always give us a few extra treats at the counter. Those treats were deposited in Jen's purse, where Barrett discovered them a few hours later. When I heard the crunching and saw Barrett's nose inside the handbag, I yanked her out by the scruff of her neck, but the possibility remained that she had consumed some loose change or a stick of lip balm with her evening snack.

We've got her on a prescription diet for the next week, and her digestion seems to be back to normal, meaning x-rays and blood tests can be put on hold. Hopefully there's no pennies jingling around in her belly.