When Mr. Ford & I first bought our house, we made sure we had a sizable yard for a big dog. A big dog was always in the foreseeable future.
Our first pet was Annoying McTweets (may he rest in peace), a cockatiel my father had gifted to me when I was two. He had a bad attitude & didn't like much of anything other than people putting their faces right up to him & talking to him in a high pitched voice. He kicked his little bird bucket tin 2011 at the ripe old age of 19. Pictures of him make me cry. Therefor I shall not post.
Next came baby the ferret who we 'rescued' from being neglected by one of Mr. Ford's friends (to be fair, the friend acknowledged that he wasn't able to spend enough time with her & wanted to give her a better home). Since Mr. Ford had never had a new pet, because his parents were the devils, and because I was going to have the ferret whether he liked it or not, I 'immersed' him in the idea by telling him I already adopted the ferret well before any arrangements were made. To my surprise, his reaction was less of "Rebecca! You can't make these decisions without consulting me! I do not want a rodent" & more of "OH MY GOD WHERE IS IT? I want to see it!". A man after my own heart :)
The next pet was barbecue bob Mcpickles, a wiggly 7 week old orange tabby cat that a friend of a friend found in a BBQ in the north end. Bob is now about 3 years old & he is a fat lard. He enjoys laying on the dinning room table when he knows he is not supposed to & eating the other cat's food.
The latest cat is Chevy Ford. He is a beautiful cat & he knows it. I had no desire to scoop more cat poo but MaryAnne (mother) was dating a man from Elmwood with kittens & she had fallen in love with this cat. Being the logical woman that she is, instead of taking it to her house, I was volunteered to adopt it. When we first brought Chevy home, we confined him to a room as we have a big house & didn't want him to be overwhelmed. Chevy laid down as compressed as he could make himself with his face in a corner & Bob stood above him & spat at him. Poor Chevy. He got his revenge though. Although all of our animals are sterilised, Chevy is a concupiscent creature & enjoys 'extra curricular' cuddling with Bob. Gross.
Luibov the beagle was a result of me crying in my office lunch room. I was minding my own business reading the Free Press when I came across an article for a litter of weird looking mole-puppies. The owner was an archaeologist on a dig in northern Ontario. He observed that the solution for animal control there was destroying the stray & stopped animal services from shooting a beautiful auburn dog. He loaded her up in his van & took her home to his wife & baby where she promptly became ill & had puppies. The article was in the paper because their family friend found this very noble & was hoping to make an account to help them with the vet bills. The archaeologist, Paul, was more concerned about finding good homes for the puppies.
I cried. Then I called Mike & I cried some more.
We went to their house & met the puppies. We chose the sweetest, sucky-babiest dog with long legs that we thought would grow to be huge (we had no idea what it's father looked like of course).
We were wrong. She is medium at best & has a very timid demeanour around strangers. She is very intelligent & a quick learner, however she has crippling separation anxiety which makes no sense as she has experienced no debilitating stresses in her life. She is also alone by herself for approximately 4 hours a day.
I don't believe in kennelling because she hates it & it makes me feel like I am caging her like a zoo animal, however when she is home alone she is destructive. Please allow me to construct a list of the items she has stolen & destroyed:
2 candles, 5 cookbooks, 2 pairs of glasses, 3 dog beds, a picture frame, a necklace, 2 plastic serving spoons, tupperware of all shapes & sizes, milk cartons, Tassimo disks, food packaging, a hat, slippers, sandals, 2 pairs of shoes, 2 mitts, coffee filters, an electric toothbrush, ornamental rocks, a Jets foam toy, a CD, innumerable pictures, pens, highlighters, juice boxes, her coats, Christmas tree ornaments, build-a-bears, a spaghetti squash, cherries, bills, a cheque book, a social insurance card, a driver's license, toilet brushes, the remote, year books, laundry baskets, toilet paper, paper towels, markers, pencils, 3 weeks worth of birth control, hair mouse, puzzle pieces, headphones, DVD & probably $500 worth of 'indestructable' chew toys
Today, I, her patient & kind owner woke up to my alarm to see that Lou was still in bed with me. She of course, got super excited that I was awake & tried to run her nose on my face. I thought it was a safe to assume that she had been sleeping with me peacefully this morning. WRONG. Went downstairs to find that the garbage (tall with a lid) had been raided & food wrappers shredded. It must have been my lucky day because the poo that I had thrown in there yesterday from Lou's accident by the back door was taken out & smeared around the hardwood floor.
In my rage & chased after the dog screaming "WHO DID THAT" (full well knowing who did that).
After I had said my mantras & brought my blood pressure down, I let Lou outside for a pee & we went down to the basement to have a nice, calming shower.
I knew that Lou was still being bad on my way back up the stairs. She completely gives herself away, which is even more enraging because she knows that she has done something bad but she has still done it.
If all I had to do was to make sure that she was aware what was considered 'a bad', I would be ok with that, but what am I supposed to do with a dog that knows she will be in sh*t for chewing *insert anything here*, but does it anyway?
Anywho, I go up the stairs, where Lou greeted me with her bad dog eyes. Went to the bathroom to find that she had stood up against my dresser, grabbed a bag of sour gummy worms & pulled them down to the floor, taking with them the pair of discontinued glasses I had to buy when she chewed up the originals. LUCKILY the glasses flew underneath the dresser out of her reach & she had only eaten as many gummy worms as a half an hour shower would allow her.
When I called her name to point at the 'bad' & make sure that she was aware that she was the one that committed 'the bad', she promptly hid under the guest bed.
I poked myself in the eye with my mascara while trying to simultaneously calm myself down & do my make-up.
