Doggone it!

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.