I
am not a dog person. I was actually
rather surprised when I learned this about myself having grown up with dogs and
actively participated in their care, but it is different when you are more
responsible for them. Because I was the
person home during the day and the kids were young when we first acquired Dori
(our Chesapeake Bay Retriever) it fell to me to do house breaking and clean-up
etc. I was the one who was upset when
Dori chewed a hole in our very expensive Navajo rug, I was the one who was not
pleased when Dori entered our house for the very first time and immediately
went and pooped in the living room (we didn’t even let our kids play in the
living room), and I was the one who was dismayed when I found she had shredded
a whole roll of wrapping paper all over the family room. This is in addition to the fact that she
sheds amazing amounts of hair all over the house. While I have yet to find her standing in
front of the open refrigerator, I think she must have figured out a way to do
that when I am not around based on the fact that I find dog hair in there. And yes, while it is astounding that Dori is
still alive (she is actually the best dog we have ever had!), it is even more
astounding that we have another dog.
It
was a very weak moment on my part and it started with the fact that I love my
daughter very much. She, like my
husband, loves animals and really wanted a dog.
My weak moment was finished the moment I laid eyes on the cutest little
miniature poodle puppy you have ever seen; she was beautiful! If only I had known then what I know
now… We named our poodle Elle because
we figured a poodle, even a miniature one, needed a snooty, feminine name and
Elle has lived up to the snooty part.
But we probably should have named her Calamity Jane because she has been
more trouble than four big dogs would have ever been. She requires watching like a two year old and
if she is out of sight for more than 5 minutes we know she has gotten into
something. I was working on homework
yesterday and upon finishing some questions I was working on, realized that
Elle was not around. I went looking for
her and found her on a table in the basement.
We store the cat food in a Tupperware container that was on the table
and she had somehow gotten the container open and was enjoying an early dinner
of cat food. Dog experts say that
chocolate is like poison for dogs; they are either wrong or for Elle, it is
like iocane powder (The Princess Bride) and she has “spent the last several
years building up an immunity to it.” If chocolate was the only thing Elle went
looking for then we would be the most fortunate of pet owners, but it isn’t. Last fall Levi and I were going away for the
weekend and we hired a girl to come and take care of the dogs for us. When she came over so we could show her around
and go over dog things she had come from college and had her backpack with her.
We mentioned right away that if Vee (our
dogsitter) had anything to eat in the backpack she should put the bag up where Elle
couldn’t get to it or Elle would find the food.
It turned out that Vee didn’t have any food in her backpack – only a
pack of gum, which Elle found and promptly ate.
(I gave Vee another pack of gum.)
What was amazing to Vee was the gum was in a pocket of the backpack and
Elle had to unzip the pocket to get to the gum.
Elle
has found and eaten numerous packs of gum out of my purse and one week it was
two packs. Yes, she has to unzip my purse to get to them. (While having my purse zipped does not deter
Elle it does slow her down, so I zip my purse in hopes that I can find her
before she has done too much damage.) The one time was actually funny though because
she got stuck (not dangerously so) in my purse strap and was highly
frustrated. She has eaten unpopped
microwave popcorn out of my daughter’s book bag, Katheryne’s social security
card (that one was not so funny), Cheerios my sister-in-law Kristi has packed
for my niece Kaylee if she got hungry and needed a snack, numerous pieces of
gum, hard candy and chocolate from my mom purse, and last Thanksgiving she ate
half of the cherry pie. It was also around the holidays last year she
discovered our neighbors had some really tasty trash. She got herself into their trash bin and then
ate so much she couldn’t get back out again.
It took her several days and a bath to recover from that adventure. These are just the things it is reasonable to
mention. Being a dog, there are many
other things Elle has eaten that you DO NOT want to know about.
Perhaps
now you understand why I am not a dog person.
It is like having a two year old that never grows up or a child who is a
discipline problem that never gets any better.
The kicker is that while I am not a dog person and would love to wring
their necks sometimes, they have stolen my heart and I will miss them terribly
when it is time to say good-bye.
Thankfully, I am not saying good-bye yet. And when I do have to say good-bye I will
have this blog post to remind me of why I shouldn’t get another dog.
