Last month, my beloved dog Buster suddenly became unresponsive. He could barely move, and he refused to eat or drink. After an ultrasound, the vet told us she found an incurable cancerous mass on his spleen. “Take him home and give him all of his favorite treats,” she said, “and then call me tomorrow and we’ll say good-bye.” On the way home, in a pit of abject devastation, I stopped by the Cambridge PetSmart down near Alewife and picked up a spread of special dog treats.
Enter the Dunkin’ Vanilla Glaze Flavor Dog Biscuits, an absurd donut-shaped treat that nobody asked for. Made with vague ingredients and enriched with flavors dogs crave, such as “yogurt” and “natural flavors,” these iced dog biscuits are sprinkled with rainbow jimmies that add a burst of color to the tartar controlling crunch.
When I opened the package, Buster perked up and stuck his snout directly in the bag. For an establishment that embraces sweeteners the way Dunks does, they have beaten the odds and created a biscuit that smells more “dog food” than “saccharine.” If I had to describe the aroma emitting from the bag, I couldn’t. Let’s just say it smelled like the dead bodies at the bottom of the Mystic River, if instead of water the Mystic River were filled with Dunkin’ iceds, four creams, four sugars. Needless to say, Buster couldn’t get enough.
What I witnessed next was nothing short of a miracle, a comeback the likes of which we haven’t seen since 2017. To put it in layman’s terms, theoretically, Buster was down 28–3 in the second half, and then outta nowhere, he throws a record-breaking 466 yards to win not his second, not his third, not even his fourth, but his fucking fifth Super Bowl ring. He took one bite of a Dunkin’ Vanilla Glaze Flavor Dog Biscuit and said, “I’m gonna cheat death,” unlike our lord and savior, Tom Brady, who has never cheated at anything in his life.
“But why was the ball deflated to less than the required 13 PSI?” Gee, I dunno, why do the tires on your ’99 Honda Civic deflate to less than 13 PSI in the dead of winter, jackass? How about familiarizing yourself with Boyle’s law, buddy, then maybe we can talk about how pressure and volume are inversely proportional at a constant temperature.
Anyway, my dying dog.
Within literal seconds, Buster was alive again. It was like that scene in The Departed when Jack Nicholson has that big bowl of coke and he looks honestly fucking crazy. Buster was awake, and he wanted more. He wanted to swim in a pile of Dunkin’ dog treats with a couple of hookers, allegorically speaking.
Over the course of the week, I kept Buster supplied with a healthy daily dose of Dunkin’ Vanilla Glaze Flavor Dog Biscuits, and I swear to god it was like his spleen cancer was the British troops and his antibodies were the minutemen, and the antibodies were standing at the Old North Bridge of Buster’s body with a musket saying, “I don’t fucking think so.” Oh, we’re talking about comebacks? Let’s talk about a tiny colonial militia holding fast against five hundred British troops and then swelling to four thousand men overnight in what we can all agree was the greatest moment in American history. Alarm and fucking muster, am I right?
Buster wasn’t the only one who yearned for the Dunks dog biscuits. If my kids see a glazed cookie with rainbow jimmies, they’re gonna eat it. I warned them that these were not a food meant for human consumption, but they’ve been eating actual Dunkin’ donuts their entire lives, and those things haven’t contained a single edible ingredient since 1998, so who cares. The kids reported that the dog biscuits tasted “pretty good.”
At that point, my curiosity got the best of me, and I took a bite, just to see. The cookie was giving hints of vanilla, with a whisper of savory, plus the muted chalky taste of the jimmies, and then just like this overpowering foretaste of gasoline. I don’t know if I can really describe it, but let’s say it tasted the way the Charles River looked back in the ’80s, when the surface had an iridescent shimmer. Let’s say it tasted as if they took the tea back out of the harbor. Let’s say it tasted the way I feel when people act like, regardless of basic science and the laws of fucking physics, there’s ever been a single shred of evidence that Tom fucking Brady needs to cheat at football, as if that guy doesn’t understand my boy Bernoulli’s principle better than anyone you’ve ever met. Thirty-six hours later, we still had memories of the biscuit on our taste buds, even after scrubbing our tongues clean with Listerine. I mean, talk about long-lasting flavor.
But yeah, Buster is so back, baby! We’re playing in overtime, and OT is when the real magic happens, so he’s staying in the game for as long as it takes to run out the clock.
In conclusion, I rate the Dunkin’ Vanilla Glaze Flavor Dog Biscuits a 10/10 on the scale of staging an unfathomable comeback. It’s like, imagine you’re down three games in the ALCS and then outta nowhere you absolutely cannot lose, and to be crystal fucking clear, yes, in this analogy, Buster is the 2004 Red Sox, and it goes without saying that the only thing that sucks harder than my dog having spleen cancer is the Yankees.
As for flavor, a 2/10 rating is as generous as I can be, but come on, buddy, no one is going to Dunks for the taste anyway.
