charlie's blog

The dogs cont.

So, to the real story now that you have some background. The first day i had to watch them, they ended up staying in the house all day because i didn't realized i was supposed to go over there in the morning and let them out after i dropped off mary at the airport. They are pretty good at destroying the house if you leave them during the day (as mary and i did when we went to san fran) so i was really worried. It all worked out though because spike got trapped in the bathroom, the door kind of closes automatically, and i think spike must have fan into it and closed it (funny how pushing on a door from the inside closes it, at least when he is on the outside he is pushing the right direction) My mom says dogs won't pee in their own cage or something (i don't believe it) so i think that is why spike didn't completely destroy the bathroom.

The next day everything went perfectly smooth, imagine that. But Thursday, i spent the night over there, just so it looks like people are home. That morning at about six oclock in the morning i hear molly barking like crazy. This was weird because normally they sleep in mary's room on the bed (at least molly does, i didn't let spike up there) and they sleep in until you get up, because they know they aren't getting fed until then. I decided to see what they were barking at. Now as i mentioned, molly likes to tunnel out, so we have been filling in all her holes with rocks bigger than her, but the first thing she does when she goes out there is inspect every single one of them As i watched, molly would bark like crazy and point at a spot in her new hole, then back up, and spike would come in and start digging, then back off, molly would come in and check the work. This continued for about five minutes, which is how much time it took me to throw on some clothes, go to the bathroom, run out there, grab molly and throw her in her cage inside. I figure spike is too dumb to realize what he was involved in, but molly knows, she actually understands why she gets punished.

Everything went smoothly for the next day because i remember to put them out when i left and i only let them inside when i was there. (they are never bad when you are around to catch them being bad) but last night at 8:30 i went for a run. Silly me, i thought i could leave them inside for half an hour. when i left they were both sitting there on top of the couch looking at the big glass window on the front of the house, just eyeing me, waiting. My run took longer than i wanted because my knee has been hurting me quite a bit when i run downhill, but i got a good uphill work out in and then walked back. I got back to the house sometime after nine, maybe 9:15. At first i thought everything was okay when i walked into the house, but then i realized that i hadn't turned the light on yet. Somehow in the course of 45 minutes, they hadn't gotten really pissed off at me (well, actually i think it was just spike) and had tipped the garbage, dragged half of it outside in the lawn ( i think spike ate half of my styrofoam box from betos, cause i can only find the top) the lighter fluid container, their cup for scooping food (which was 5 feet up in teh air, behind a brass pipe, maybe they jumped up on the dryer, who knows) the bottle of dog soap, some random blanket, and they stored all of this in three holes they have been working on in the middle of the lawn with the dryer sheets they had taken earlier. Oh, and a pencil that they broke into about 20 pieces and left on the floor. But the thing that is annoying is not the things i found out in the yard, but the things that are just completely gone. These include, my socks from that day, the poster of the constellation orion that i bought in san fran and was sitting in the middle of the dinning room table (my own fault for not putting it in my car), erin's utilities check (actually this might have dissapeared earlier, but i still can't find it) and box covers for three movies. There are probably other things, but i didn't really feel like looking last night.

Well, i guess it isn't that bad, but it is really annoying, and it is the fact that their is absolutely no understanding with them, i don't know how you make them realize not to do these things, because if you punich them when you get home, they don't really know why they got punished, but you can't reward them, all you can do is seperate them from the opportunity to do it, but that doesn't teach them not to. Well, that is it, i am just not looking forward to going over their later.

Posted by cmorton at July 11, 2003 02:09 PM | TrackBack