My Horrible Dog, or WTF?

Journal dexterpexter's Journal: My Horrible Dog, or WTF? 12

Journal by dexterpexter on Thursday March 08, 2007 @01:43AM

I love her, I do. But she has an inherent streak of mischief in her that has exploded since becoming an only-dog. I don't pretend that dogs are geniuses, but I am becoming increasingly impressed and frustrated at the lengths my dog goes to be a Bad Dog.

It isn't a training process anymore; she knows that she has done wrong and has concocted schemes to try and get away with her exploits, and would succeed were it not for her 'tell,' a special wrinkling of her face and a squinting of her eyes that linger hours after her misdeeds. I detail only some of her exploits here, yet I have still managed three typed pages.

For the TIVO minded among you, you may skip to the end to find what led to this entry. For the rest of you:

Welcome to the world of elicit doggy behaviour.

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Houdini
My dog is sometimes lovingly referred to as Houdini by those who know her best. At our previous home, it took only walking into the backyard to understand this point. With wire wrapped along the top of our fence to prevent her climbing out, chicken wire stapled and buried along the bottom to prevent her digging out, and a six foot fence to keep her from jumping out, we thought we had finally foiled her, and the neighbors probably thought we were crazy. Then, after carefully watching as we came and went, she learned to unlatch the gate. So, we had to lock it.
Still, despite our best efforts, she would find yet another way out. Once, she was caught scaling between the six foot privacy fence and another vertical object so that she could jump over the privacy fence. We chained her. So, she found a way (not always successful, but occasionally so) to unlatch herself from her chain. I should also mention that she has escaped from her seatbelt harness, cross ties, and is pretty much a wash when it comes to wearing medical paraphernalia because she slips right out of it. When I 'shipped' her via plane once, I half expected her to have gotten out of her crate before landing. Despite my wiring the door shut.

Like the raptors testing the fences in Jurassic Park, the clever girl always found a way out. I should loan her out to prisons!

I don't mean to give the impression that she was desperately trying to run away. Most of the time, she would terrorize the neighborhood cats by trying to befriend them, and then return to our stoop within a short amount of time. Getting out was simply a challenge she had to beat, or a means to carry out some mischief and come home. Her mother did the same, and her mother became a three-legged dog as a result. Funny what misfortunes looking wolf-like can bring.

Taking Inventories for later Thievery
After tearing down her cable running line through sheer might (her mother was bred to pull--you can imagine what walking her is like), she became a mostly inside dog. Not the best situation considering she is effectively a farm dog at heart and gets antsy, but it works. Now she has taken to letting herself out of her room. Not a terribly difficult challenge compared to the previous backyard setup, and the obstacles I set up in the house are mostly futile attempts to slow her down.

But, when she lets herself out, she also helps herself to every bread product in the house that isn't carefully protected. What drives her to eat bread, I will never know, but I thought it particularly odd that, when given leftover bratwurst, she ate the bun first and then ate the meat. I suspect that she has climbed onto my counters looking for bread (ugh, animals have no business around food preparation surfaces), and I imagine that its only a matter of time before she starts opening cabinets and I have to get child protection locks, assuming that she won't defeat those as well. She found her way into the pantry the other day, when I didn't quite close it. She pulled down a bag of tortilla chips, which she discovered that she didn't like. I can see her subtly taking "smell inventories" of the kitchen, making little doggy mental notes on how good the food might be if and when she sneaks in there. We have to put our potato chips and bread up high, in the cabinet with the glasses. My beautiful white teacups are displayed beside French bread. Who rules this house, anyway?

Couch Potato, and Covering Her Tracks
After letting herself out and ransacking the kitchen, she curls up on our couch while we are gone. Upon returning home and opening the front door, you hear the tell-tale click of her pawnails on the linoleum as she leaps over the afore-mentioned obstructions I have placed in her way to discourage her roaming. You find her lying in her room on her pillow, stretching as though she has been sleeping the entire time. Only she has her tell-tale guilty look her face, and one of the couch cushions is appreciably warmer than the other, featuring a light dusting of fur. And don't forget the 'Guilty Face'! I stayed downstairs one day, and secretly watched this unfold (to be sure) before my very eyes. Ilovedexerpexter came downstairs, and the couch-occupying dog zipped into her room, where I could see her lay down onto her pillow, and look asleep. This indicates that she knows that she is doing wrong. How does one train that out of a dog?

Ransacking
Lately she has taken to carrying random things (things she was never interested in before, since she was never really the kind of dog that likes to carry things around in her mouth) back into her room. I have found black socks (why black? Ask her.) and various food containers amongst her "things." But it goes beyond her "shopping," and has expanded to other rooms in the house. We were especially surprised to find our winter gloves and hats strewn about the family room, and our checkbook on the floor. She never tore things out like that before! Congratulations, I have a teenager? Hmmm.

Tonight, though, took the cake.

Sneaking
She is more accustomed to my daytime exploits than my shorter nighttime outings, so after unexpectedly being out for eight hours the other night, I hurried through the door to let her out. Only she wasn't in her room. Boy was she going to be in trouble! Where was she, though? No tell-tale click of her pawnails on the linoleum. No sheepish dog coming around the corner, laying down in a submissive position for being caught out of her room.

Nothing. No dog, no noise.

I go from room to room, calling for her and replaying the day frantically in my mind, reassuring myself that there was no way that I had let her out to relieve herself without letting her back in. Of course I had let her back in. Yet I hear nothing. Was she somehow stolen? Be reasonable now, I thought; your dog isn't THAT awesome, and your door bolt was engaged.

I finally open up the door to the master bedroom (we keep the door closed) and there she is, looking guilty. I look around the room and take my own inventory:

Half a bag of potato chips. Gone.
Half a bag of wheat thins. Gone.
Crumbs from said items. Everywhere.
Bed infiltrated and covered in crumbs and dog hair (have a rolling fit, did we girl?)
Stuff strewn about? You betcha.
Pot pie container. Where the hell did that come from?

How in the world did she get in there?

A couple of possibilities. The least likely is that she let herself out of her room and opened up the door to the bedroom, then shut the door behind her. Although she has the afore-mentioned ability to manipulate gate handles, I think the master bedroom door knob is outside of her capabilities, and she wouldn't purposely shut the door behind her.
The most likely possibility is that at sometime, probably when I was changing clothes in the closet, she sneaked into my bedroom and hid in the corner without my noticing. She was locked into the bedroom (when I shut the door to lock her OUT) when I left, and somehow I neglected to do my usual, last minute pleading for her to be good, so that it was not noticed that she wasn't in her room. Finding herself in the fortune of being locked inside the Forbidden Room, she gorged herself on potato chips and crackers while sprawled out on my king-sized bed, and then apparently ventured into the master bathroom to drink out of a not-so-clean toilet (as evidenced by the very-apparently reduced water level.)

Then, upset at having been left for so long and filled with large quantities of toilet water, she proceeded to soil my carpet. WTF?

Ahhh. You choose your friends not for who they are, but in spite of who they are.

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